Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND INDUSTRY

The President of the Board of Trade was asked—

Oral Answers to Questions — Commercial Debt

Barbara Follett: What assessment she has made of the damage caused to small businesses by the late payment of commercial debt. [31125]

Mr. Lock: What representations she has received from small businesses on the damage caused to them by the late payment of commercial debt. [31137]

The Minister for Small Firms, Trade and Industry (Mrs. Barbara Roche): It is clear that late payment continues to be a major concern to small businesses, with a number of surveys showing that British businesses are less profitable and less competitive as a direct result of late payment. In some cases, their very survival is threatened. That is why we have responded to calls from the small business community and announced a new package of measures to tackle late payment. The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Bill is an integral part of the measures and is supported by the majority of small firms.

Barbara Follett: May I congratulate my hon. Friend on the legislation? Does she agree that small businesses, working in partnership, can help to promote a better payment culture?

Mrs. Roche: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. If we are to improve the payment culture, there needs to be proper partnership between Government and business organisations. That is why we are working jointly with the Forum of Private Business, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, the Confederation of British Industry, the British Chambers of Commerce, the National Farmers Union and the Union of Independent Companies through the better payment practice group to promote a better payment culture. The group has met regularly and already produced a substantial body of work.

Mr. Lock: May I also congratulate my hon. Friend on the measure, which will be welcomed by industry? I notice that the Bill refers to late payment among small

and medium firms. Will she inform the House what percentage of firms will be able immediately to reap the benefit of the measure? Does she agree that the problem of late payment disproportionately affects small and medium enterprises?

Mrs. Roche: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that the problem disproportionately affects small businesses. That is why, under the phasing arrangements that we propose, small firms will be able to take advantage of the proposals.
We fully support the decision of the Federation of Small Businesses to publish league tables of average payment times of big companies and their large private subsidiaries. The league tables will open to public scrutiny the payment record of Britain's larger companies and provide small suppliers with useful information on how quickly they can expect to be paid when dealing with a large customer. I congratulate the federation on that project and wish it every success.

Mr. Lansley: Will the hon. Lady heed warnings from bodies such as the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce that statutory interest payments may lead to longer contract payment terms between companies and their suppliers? Consequently, will she amend the legislation?

Mrs. Roche: The hon. Gentleman is quite right to hint that we have listened and consulted widely. Indeed, we are very grateful for the contribution of the British Chambers of Commerce. We have consulted it all along. If the hon. Gentleman has an opportunity to look at the legislation, he will see that it is not possible to opt out of it. We propose to give a reserve power to courts to deem that excessively long payment periods are a de facto opting out. I am sure that he and his Conservative colleagues will appreciate that.

Mr. Cotter: I am sure that the Minister knows that I and my colleagues agree with and very much welcome the Bill. Does she agree that, often, both local and national Government are very bad at paying? I hope that she shares my view that the Government should give a lead in that direction.

Mrs. Roche: I absolutely agree. I was a critic of the previous Government, who had an appalling payment record. The House will recall that the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), boasted of stringing creditors along. When the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan)—who speaks on small firms on behalf of the official Opposition—was an Education Minister, almost a quarter of the Department's bills were paid late. That is why I intend to provide in the summer a league table of Government Departments, and I have taken the opportunity this week to remind local authorities of their obligations as well.

Oral Answers to Questions — Export Credits Guarantee System

Mr. Cohen: What reforms she proposes of the export credits guarantee system. [31126]

The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): The Export Credits Guarantee Department's support is vital in helping exporters of capital goods and projects win valuable business overseas. It seeks continuously to improve the services it offers and does this in partnership with its customers—exporters and banks. I believe this approach works well.
My noble Friend the Minister for Trade announced on 11 February a review of the arrangements for providing finance for capital goods and project exports. A consultation paper has been issued seeking comments over a two-month period. Copies of the document have been placed in the Library of the House.

Mr. Cohen: Would my right hon. Friend concede that there is a lot wrong with the export credits guarantee scheme? Is not the £800 million Iraqi debt an example? Is not the contract in Malaysian ringgits—which, because of the devaluation of that currency, has cost the British taxpayer millions of pounds—another? Can she say something about that? Is there not too much emphasis on defence exports, which some of the countries concerned can ill afford, and not enough emphasis on the export of domestic goods? Is it not time for reform?

Mrs. Beckett: With great respect to my hon. Friend, I have to say that, on balance, the ECGD system works well. I understand some of the concerns that he identifies. Obviously, devaluation has an impact to some degree, although payments continue to be made up to date. Some of the ECGD cover in Malaysia is ringgit-related, and so was not affected by the changes that he identifies. On defence exports and defence cover, although there are fluctuations from time to time—depending on the flow of contracts—he will find, on balance, that an average of only 14 per cent. of the cover that the ECGD supplies is for defence.

Mr. Alan Clark: Has the DTI made any estimate of the number of British jobs supported or the amount of foreign currency earned over, say, the period since the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr. Cohen) came into the House, when he has criticised the ECGD?

Mrs. Beckett: Not in so many words. We have not calculated the number of jobs in relation to my hon. Friend's most worthy tenure in this House. I recognise the value of much of the work that the ECGD does, and the right hon. Gentleman may be aware that so successful has it been of late that this year that it has returned more than £400 million to the Treasury.

Mr. Barry Jones: I acknowledge the excellence of the system and of the ministerial leadership, but may I draw to my right hon. Friend's attention the extreme difficulties of a great British exporter—British Steel? The pound is highly valued and it is proving difficult to export against tough competition. Is there any way in which British Steel and like companies may have assistance?

Mrs. Beckett: I know of the strong support that my hon. Friend has shown to British Steel over the years. The Government understand the concerns of exporters at this time. He will know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken steps which we believe will lead to

a stable but competitive pound in the longer term. I know that some exporters are effective in certain markets—those whose markets are dollar-controlled, for example, have not been affected in the same way—but that many efficient exporters such as British Steel are doing what they can to expand their markets in other countries.

Mrs. Gillan: Does the President of the Board of Trade agree that at the moment countries such as France, Spain and Italy do not show any great eagerness to dismantle their public sector support for their exporters? Does she also agree that if we implement changes to the ECGD unilaterally, we will be in danger of going out on a limb and handicapping United Kingdom exporters in the world market? Therefore, will she give us an undertaking that following the consultation no changes will be made to the ECGD regime before it can be clearly demonstrated that other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries are making similar changes to their regimes, as a failure to do so could disadvantage UK exporters?

Mrs. Beckett: I understand and share the hon. Lady's concern that we should do nothing that could disadvantage British business, but the whole purpose of the consultation is to hear from British business what it believes will give it a further competitive edge, so it is inconceivable that it is likely to advise us to do something that would damage its concerns and we would certainly not want to take any such steps.
On a note of caution to the hon. Lady, I understand the concern that lies behind her question—she is asking us not to do something unilaterally that would be disadvantageous—but one of the reasons for the review is to find out whether there are steps that the ECGD could take, unilaterally or otherwise, that would give British exporters a competitive edge. I am sure that she would not want us to wait for other people to do that.

Oral Answers to Questions — Financial Services Industry

Mr. Cousins: If she will request the Home Office reviews of the financial services industries of the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey to assess the impact on the UK of legislation on the limited liability of accountants passed by the states of Jersey. [31128]

The Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs (Mr. Nigel Griffiths): The Home Office review will be looking into all aspects of financial regulation in the Crown dependencies, including the registration and regulation of companies and other forms of business.

Mr. Cousins: I congratulate the Government and my hon. Friend on at last tackling abuses such as the so-called "Sark lark", whereby someone can pretend to live on Sark and hide a large number of companies and tax liabilities by doing so. However, the issues are complex. For some purposes, the Channel Islands are inside Britain, but outside the European Union. Will my hon. Friend therefore assure the House that we will not legislate on limited liability for accountants before the House has had an opportunity to discuss and debate all those matters and until we have had an assurance that there will be independent regulation of accountants?

Mr. Griffiths: I very much agree. That is important and the business manifesto gives a commitment to ensure


that there is a framework of independent regulation of the accountancy profession. Of course, we are considering all suggestions on the best way forward, including those of hon. Members—of course, that will be independent of the Home Office review.

Mr. Gibb: Did the Home Secretary consult the Minister before the reviews were announced? Would it not have been courteous if the Home Secretary or the President of the Board of Trade had consulted and discussed the matter with the Governors of the territories prior to the announcement of the review?

Mr. Griffiths: The review allows people to give their views on what is happening in their dependencies and domestically here. Of course, the Governors of the dependent territories are entitled to make submissions, as are Members of Parliament and anyone else involved. We will welcome such consultation and views.

Oral Answers to Questions — Space Exploration

Mr. McWilliam: If she will make a statement on the role of the United Kingdom in the development of the space exploration programme. [31129]

The Minister for Science, Energy and Industry (Mr. John Battle): The United Kingdom has a substantial and highly respected space science community, which is actively involved in defining the priorities for the European Space Agency's exploration programme. British scientists are involved in a wide range of current and future missions, including satellites to study the sun, Mars and Saturn and its moon Titan, as well as observatories trained on other galaxies.

Mr. McWilliam: Will my hon. Friend the Minister join me in congratulating British-born space scientist Michael Foale on his achievements on the United States Mir missions? Does he agree that Mr. Foale is an excellent role model in encouraging young people to study science?

Mr. Battle: Yes. I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Foale when he came back to earth on 18 December. He provides a role model that attracts youngsters to become interested in space research. May I congratulate my hon. Friend, who for some time has chaired the parliamentary all-party space committee and championed those matters in the House? I hope that he will long continue to do so.

Mr. Wilkinson: Can the Minister assure us that the United Kingdom will continue to channel a large proportion of its space effort through the European Space Agency, which has proved an exceedingly cost-effective vehicle for space science and exploitation, rather than through the Commission of the European Union, which is an infinitely more bureaucratic organisation that does not have the scientific or technological expertise for the job?

Mr. Battle: I did not envisage that this question would be so controversial. The United Kingdom has a substantial space programme, on which we spend some £45 million. Of that, some £33 million is spent through the European Space Agency, in which we play an active part. British space scientists are actively involved in the Mars and lunar working groups, and we shall watch with interest

when, later today, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration makes its announcement about the possible presence of water on the moon. We are—and shall continue to be—involved in those international programmes.

Oral Answers to Questions — Utility Regulators

Mr. Rooney: If she will make a statement about the objectives of her Department's review of the utility regulators. [31130]

Mrs. Beckett: The objective of the interdepartmental review is to set a long-term, stable framework for utility regulation, which is seen to be fair by all interest groups, particularly consumers. I hope to be able to publish the conclusions of the review on utility regulation in a Green Paper in the near future.

Mr. Rooney: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. She will know that, although fuel poverty is a big issue, it was totally ignored by the previous Administration. In April, gas deregulation comes to Yorkshire, where there have already been far too many episodes of bandit canvassers trying to make people sign up to deals on a totally false basis—they have even signed up people who are dead and made children sign contracts. Will she ensure that the regulator takes action against such people?

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. When the system of regulation was set up, the Conservative party claimed that it would favour the consumer, but that was not what the legislation said and it has not often been what has happened in practice. It is important that, as competition is introduced into the domestic gas market, the consumer is protected. My hon. Friend the Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs and the director general of the regulatory office are in close contact on this. Action has already been taken to put conditions into the companies' licences to ensure that good practice is followed and that, if it is not, compensation is possible.

Sir Sydney Chapman: Will the right hon. Lady give an assurance that, in the review of the utility regulators, she will do her utmost to strike the right balance between encouraging competition and ensuring that regulation is not unduly suffocating? I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House feel that the Competition Bill—which is about to have its Third Reading in another place—will give the regulators too much arbitrary power.

Mrs. Beckett: I entirely share the hon. Gentleman's view that it is important to strike the right balance between competition and regulation. Our approach has always been to ensure competition where possible and regulation where necessary. It has also always been our view that that regulation should be transparent, consistent and predictable. The hon. Gentleman is concerned lest the Competition Bill in some way unfairly changes that balance. I do not believe that it will, but the issue will be discussed both when the Green Paper is produced and when that Bill comes to the House of Commons.

Mr. Alan Johnson: My right hon. Friend will be aware that Hull's municipally owned telephone service survived


nationalisation in 1911. It also survived privatisation in 1984 because, although it may not be popular with the Director General of Oftel, it is cherished by the local population that it serves. In the light of the Oftel report on Kingston Communications, which was published on Monday, will she remind Oftel that its job is to protect the customer, not to promote BT?

Mrs. Beckett: I understand my hon. Friend's concerns and I am well aware of how extremely popular the company is in Hull. Currently, other suppliers can enter that market, with the exception of BT—that is the issue on which the director general has sought consultation. I feel confident that, if the existing system is as popular with the local community as my hon. Friend says, it will survive any review. Although I have taken on board his points, I should remind him that it may ultimately fall to me to take a decision in this matter, so I hope that he will forgive me if I refrain from further comment.

Mr. Boswell: Has the right hon. Lady dropped her ill-considered proposal to impose an extra charge on the bulk of consumers in order to pursue her social objectives for a limited number of low-income consumers?

Mrs. Beckett: I note the pejorative tone. The hon. Gentleman will see what we propose when the Green Paper is published in the near future. If he is saying, on behalf of the Conservative party, that what happens to low-income consumers of crucial utilities is a matter of indifference, that bears out his party's practice in government. I do not think it wise to advertise that.

Oral Answers to Questions — Corporate Governance

Mr. Beard: If she will make a statement on her proposals on corporate governance. [31132]

The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Mr. Ian McCartney): My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade yesterday urged companies and institutions to achieve higher standards of governance as a matter of best practice. The issue is competitiveness. Good governance is central to the well-run company that works for long-term prosperity in partnership with others. We want companies and institutions to show leadership in delivering best practice. I hope that they will respond positively; if they do not, the Government may have to act.

Mr. Beard: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. When considering what should follow, will he bear it in mind that the performance and value of many companies will depend not only on the capital invested in them but—in many cases to the same extent, and in some cases more—on the scientific, technological, design, commercial and managerial abilities of those employed? Such people are the best informed about the nature of the business of many companies. Will my hon. Friend consider, as a move towards a stakeholder economy, that those employees should have the right to representation among the non-executive directors of major British companies?

Mr. McCartney: The position of successful companies and the Government is clear: we want to promote

partnership in the workplace. It is certainly true that successful companies must ensure that both executive and non-executive directors have skills and knowledge of the company, of the markets in which it operates, and of research and development and scientific activity. I am sure that successful companies will continue to do that and will expand best practice to ensure that the boardroom reflects the company's needs, in terms of both its internal activities and its activities on behalf of its customers and wider shareholders.

Mr. Chidgey: Does the Minister agree with the Royal Society of Arts, which argues in its document, "Tomorrow's Company", that intellectual property is one of the strongest determining factors in achieving competitive success? If so, is not he concerned about the lack of protection of intellectual property rights? What action are the Government taking to promote those rights in the global marketplace?

Mr. McCartney: That was a nice try to introduce the issue of international competitiveness on this question. The Government make efforts daily, weekly and monthly to ensure that scientists and others in the United Kingdom who want to take new inventions to the marketplace are protected, both nationally and internationally.

Mr. Sheldon: Is my hon. Friend aware that institutional investors such as insurance companies and pension funds have neither the expertise nor the inclination to become closely involved in the companies in which they invest? That being so, should not they be encouraged to become more closely involved in the appointment of non-executive directors, the promotion of the more meaningful role of annual general meetings, and the remuneration of directors?

Mr. McCartney: The issue of amending the Companies Act 1989 to introduce two-tier boards has been raised, but at the moment there is no demand for that. The Hampel committee found overwhelming support for the unitary boards that are the norm in the United Kingdom. A wider review of company legislation is taking place, and I have no doubt that in that review the Government will consider a range of measures and eventually reach some conclusions. The most important fact about the review is that it is the first wide, fundamental review of company law for almost 150 years; at the end of it we will produce a set of modern legislative proposals that will ensure competitiveness into the next century.

Mr. Redwood: I warmly welcome the U-turn by the President of the Board of Trade on corporate governance and I agree with her that changes should be achieved by leadership rather than by a stakeholder law. I trust that her hon. Friends are as happy as I am that she has dumped the Prime Minister's stakeholder proposals. The question is simple: given that the spirit behind the President's proposals is to lead by example, and because it is impossible to be President of the Board of Trade and to have a blind trust, will she—in the Minister's view—wind up her blind trust and tell us who has contributed to it since May?

Mr. McCartney: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should tell the House whether he had the permission of


the Leader of the Opposition before putting that question. There has been no U-turn in the Government's policy on companies. The only thing to be dumped is the Tories, who have been dumped by small, medium and big business. The right hon. Gentleman is a complete joke, nationally and internationally, when it comes to business, and his book is a sign of the shambolic nature of his view of British industry. He owes the House and British business an apology for the comments that he made about President Kohl, a man who leads a country that invests millions of pounds in the British economy, creating tens of thousands of jobs. The right hon. Gentleman owes an apology for his extreme right-wing views to those German companies and the workers who work for them in this country.

Mr. Redwood: The Minister obviously did not read or hear my views, which were not as he described and which have received 205 letters and messages of support. The question remains for the Minister and the President of the Board of Trade: will she wind up her blind trust? The Minister should apologise for the remarks that he has just made, because my interviews were unexceptional and well received.

Mr. McCartney: The right hon. Gentleman obviously does not talk to the Leader of the Opposition, who repudiated his comments and asked the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw them. The right hon. Gentleman is also out of step with the Leader of the Opposition—

Mr. Redwood: What about the blind trust?

Mr. McCartney: I am just coming to that. In his evidence to the Neill committee, the Leader of the Opposition said of blind trusts:
We believe there is an argument in favour of a form of blind trust that should be examined by the committee.
The Labour party has told the Neill committee that blind trusts should not exist and, when the position is considered by the committee, I am certain that no Labour Member will continue to have a blind trust. The right hon. Gentleman is, once again, out of step with the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Goggins: Does my hon. Friend agree that the payment last year of £3 million by United Utilities to one of its non-executive directors falls well short of a high standard of corporate governance?

Mr. McCartney: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I do not know whether anyone in Britain—other than perhaps the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood)—would defend a pay-out of £3 million to a director of a utility selling water to a captive consumer market while failing to meet customer standards and having some of Europe's poorest leakage records. I would not defend that, and I do not know anyone who would.

Oral Answers to Questions — Objective 1 Areas

Mr. Andrew George: What progress she has made in her discussions with the European Commission towards the designation of objective 1 areas. [31133]

Mrs. Roche: The Commission expects to publish on 18 March its detailed draft regulations covering the

operations of the fund for the period 2000–2006. Those draft regulations will then need to be negotiated in the Council of Ministers and approved by the European Parliament. In the meantime, Ministers have been in regular contact with the European Commission and other member states in order to secure a fair deal for the United Kingdom and its regions.

Mr. George: I thank the Minister for that reply. The Minister may not be aware that today is St. Piran's day, but he is the patron saint of Cornwall and of tin. The Minister is aware, as I am all too painfully aware, that tomorrow will be the last trading day for South Crofty tin mine—the last tin mine in Cornwall and in Europe. In view of the agony and suffering that Cornwall faces, does the Minister accept that the designation of objective 1 areas is as much a political exercise as a technical one? What message can the Minister give me to take back to help the Cornish community at this most difficult time?

Mrs. Roche: As the hon. Gentleman knows, because we have been in close contact on this, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton), I am very sad about what has happened to South Crofty. He also knows that the mine did not meet the criteria for regional selective assistance and that we considered the proposal in great detail. However, the Government office for the south west and all local agencies will continue to work closely with local authorities to alleviate the impact of the closure and improve the area's economic position. I note what the hon. Gentleman says about Cornwall. Let me assure him that we are paying close attention to the needs of Cornwall, along with those of the other areas of the United Kingdom. On his proposal, the Government statistical service is still discussing the proposals with Eurostat. It is a technical matter but I will ensure that the House is kept fully informed of progress.

Mr. Brazier: What impact does the Minister think the move towards a single currency by several of our partners will have on Britain's competitiveness? In particular, while Britain has the EU presidency, what steps will we take to ensure that no country in Europe that has not really met the criteria tries to slip into the single currency?

Madam Speaker: Order. Has the hon. Gentleman read the question? I think that Miss McIntosh has a question on the matter.

Miss McIntosh: Does the Minister share the anxiety of people in North Yorkshire about the reduced numbers involved in the reforms to objectives 1, 2 and 3, and about the loss of the Konver programme? As many of them have benefited from it, can the Minister assure the House that the Government will make the strongest representations to retain it and other such Community instruments in some form in the reforms?

Mrs. Roche: I understand well the hon. Lady's points; they are well understood throughout the Government. We are making strenuous representations to the Commission and are active in ensuring that our views are known to member states.

Oral Answers to Questions — Competitiveness

Jacqui Smith: If she will make a statement about the priorities of her Department in promoting competitiveness during the British presidency of the European Union. [31134]

Mrs. Beckett: Improving competitiveness is central to improving prosperity in both the UK and more widely in the European Union. It lies at the heart of our presidency theme of economic reform. All my EU priorities, particularly the central objective of improving the single market, are ultimately aimed at improving the competitiveness of EU industry. In the coming months, I will work to ensure that competitiveness becomes more central to EU policy making. Specifically, in the Industry Council, which I shall chair, Ministers will, for the first time, have a full discussion about the key factors that affect EU competitiveness, and about how Governments and business can work together to improve it. Next week, I will talk to the European Parliament on that very subject.

Jacqui Smith: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is by working with our European partners that we can best pursue our British interests? Did not the previous Government's half-hearted approach to all things European, and the remarks of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) about Chancellor Kohl, greatly damage the interests of British business, consumers and workers?

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is correct. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has displayed, yet again, his extraordinary talent for alienating several groups of important people at one fell swoop. He managed simultaneously to insult the corporation of the City of London, which was not amused to be told to whom to give the freedom of the City, and a leading figure in a major ally with substantial investments in this country. Almost 50,000 British jobs are in German-owned companies, including some 14,000 that came in recent years. He has, yet again, shown his complete disregard for the interests of Britain.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The right hon. Lady will be well aware of my deep commitment to manufacturing industry. She and I have spoken on the same platform in support of it. While I fully support her determination and that of the Government to increase our competitiveness in the world market, does she agree that some of the policies that her Government are following—allowing the Bank of England unnecessarily to increase interest rates, the social chapter, the minimum wage and the Government's vendetta against the transport industry—are hardly likely to make British industry more competitive in Europe and the world? May I remind her that transport costs in Europe are already less than in Britain, and that in the Budget in about a week's time, the Chancellor will increase the cost of transport?

Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Gentleman knows that I share his concern for manufacturing and have great respect for his record at least, if not that of the former Government, on manufacturing. Of course we understand the concerns that some manufacturers are expressing, although, as the hon. Gentleman will know, those who are operating in the

dollar market are not affected in quite the same way. We are in no doubt that the steps that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken to put interest rates in the control of the Bank of England will, in the long term, be beneficial to British business—a view shared by the business community. Neither the social chapter nor the national minimum wage will damage business, especially not manufacturing.
It is certainly the case that there is great concern among manufacturers about the state of the transport infrastructure. Indeed, it was one of their chief concerns in respect of reduced competitiveness during the lifetime of the previous Government. This Government will begin to address it.

Mr. Winnick: On competitiveness, is it really desirable that one or two individuals should own such vast media outlets, bearing in mind what has just happened to Mr. Patten's book? Would it not be far more desirable to have more competition in the media? I hope that my right hon. Friend will bear very much in mind what has happened over Mr. Patten's book when she considers the appropriate legislation on the media.

Mrs. Beckett: As my hon. Friend will know, the Government have taken action to begin to strengthen competition law. I share his view that it is important that there is strong competition in all areas of the marketplace, including in the newspaper industry.

Mr. Redwood: Given that the overwhelming majority of businesses in this country are small—serving a local, regional or perhaps national market—does the right hon. Lady agree with many of them that a single currency would be all cost and no benefit because they do not deal in francs or deutschmarks?

Mrs. Beckett: No, I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. What is more, neither do a great many people in his party agree. It is evident that on this issue, after the election as before it, the Conservative party is utterly divided. Many of its members, like the right hon. Gentleman, are deeply irresponsible and utterly unfit to hold office again.

Oral Answers to Questions — Export Contracts

Mr. Gordon Prentice: What guidance she gives to United Kingdom companies concerning the payment of commissions to third parties to secure export contracts. [31135]

Mrs. Roche: It is often advisable and sometimes legally necessary for exporters to enlist the services of paid intermediaries when seeking to win business overseas. The Department gives appropriate advice to any British business person who requests it.

Mr. Prentice: Does my hon. Friend the Minister share my astonishment that the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, Jonathan Aitken, is back selling arms to the middle east? Does she furthermore share my concern that in some of these arms contracts, commissions of 15 per cent. are commonplace and that on multi-million pound contracts, commissions of 25 per cent. are not unheard of? Much of the money washes back into the United


Kingdom, lining the pockets of the intermediaries. Does she agree that there is a persuasive case for giving auditors the responsibility for assessing the reasonableness, scale and destination of commissions, and that the Government should act swiftly on the Law Commission report on corruption published last week?

Mrs. Roche: I know that the Home Office will look at the Law Commission report and take it into consideration in its work. My hon. Friend can be assured that the Government are determined to combat bribery, wherever and whenever it may occur. The United Kingdom's anti-corruption legislation is among the most comprehensive in the world and we are working within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the European Union to ensure that our major overseas competitors enact similar legislation. On the other matter raised by my hon. Friend, it is for the company concerned to decide whom it wishes to employ.

Mr. Sayeed: Has the Minister made any assessment of the number of British jobs that would be lost if commission payments were not made? Where does she think those jobs would go—would it be France?

Mrs. Roche: Nothing in my remarks attacks commission payments. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), we realise that there are some circumstances where third parties are needed—for example, in the case of small firms that cannot employ their own staff overseas. That is perfectly legitimate and is part of the process.

Oral Answers to Questions — Scientific Careers

Mrs. Butler: What steps she will take to ensure equality of opportunity in scientific careers. [31136]

Mr. Battle: We would all agree that far too few women are taking up science. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade is pursuing the objective of equality of opportunity to increase the participation of women in science, engineering and technology careers, not least through our Department's development unit on women in science, engineering and technology.

Mrs. Butler: There has been a doubling in the number of women graduating in engineering since the mid-1980s—[Interruption.]—but the figure remains only 14 per cent. Does my hon. Friend agree that it might be a good idea to link his Department's development unit with the women's unit at the Department of Social Security to ensure a more co-ordinated approach and enhanced prospects for women considering that career path?

Mr. Battle: Yes, it is important that there is close co-operation between the women's unit at the DTI and the women's unit at the DSS. The women into science and engineering—WISE—project has increased the number of women engineering graduates from 7 per cent. to 14 per cent. I heard a gibe from the Opposition Benches that the increase had taken place since 1 May, but it is worth remembering that there are currently 56 Members of Parliament who have science, engineering or technological qualifications, of whom 42 are Labour Members and eight are women.

Mrs. Ann Winterton: Although I welcome the figures that the Minister has announced and the fact that there are

now more women involved in science careers, the Government should not overlook the fact that, for men or women to get into good science careers, they must do well at school and university. At the moment, there is a problem with boys and young men in sixth-form education, so will the Minister ensure that the encouragement given to girls in the past, which has resulted in success, will also be given equally to young men?

Mr. Battle: We all agree that there is an all-round problem with encouraging youngsters to get involved in science. However, we need to take positive action to ensure that we do not waste the talents of half of the population, because the figures show clearly that women are not going into advanced science and engineering careers. I should like to draw the House's attention to an article by Susan Greenfield, professor of pharmacology at Oxford university, in The Independent today. She is setting up a conference, particularly for young women, which is to take place on 9 March and is supported by our Department. She makes the point that we should encourage young women, but that we should not overlook the needs of young boys.

Oral Answers to Questions — High-technology Companies

Mr. Gunnell: What plans she has to ensure that high-technology companies have the opportunity to realise their growth potential. [31139]

Mr. Battle: The Government are determined to create an environment in which high-technology companies can develop and grow. We are working to improve the climate for investment, to help firms to access and adapt new technologies, and to improve their management and marketing skills, and to encourage real partnership between the science and engineering base and industry.

Mr. Gunnell: Experience with Yorkshire Enterprise suggests to me that the smaller hi-tech companies often have difficulty in estimating accurately the costs of their development programmes and, as a result, frequently have to come back to their initial financier for further assistance. Is that a factor my hon. Friend takes into account when looking at the ways in which we can sustain hi-tech companies, which clearly have much to contribute to our economy?

Mr. Battle: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I seem to recall that he championed Yorkshire Enterprise, which used European funding to promote several programmes aimed at small and medium enterprises. I share my hon. Friend's view. When my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced the setting up of the McCullagh group, he said that we would work to identify any barriers that might exist to high-tech firms' growth.
It is important that business links, business shops in Scotland and Business Connect in Wales have personal business advisers to ensure that companies develop good business plans. We also need to address these questions to finance houses, to ensure that investment houses back high-tech companies because, although those companies are high risk, they are the seedcorn of the future.

Mr. Ian Bruce: Does the Minister welcome the Green Paper that was published by the Secretary of State for


Defence today, in which he describes the defence diversification agency effectively as a technology transfer agency, transferring technology from the Ministry of Defence to industry? I am sure that the whole House welcomes that. However, is that all that the Government will do on defence diversification? Is there no role for the Department of Trade and Industry? Have the Labour Government abandoned all the promises that Labour made to my constituents before the general election?

Mr. Battle: The Damascene conversions among the Conservatives never cease to amaze us. Before the general election, they opposed any introduction of defence diversification. I am delighted with that conversion. Yes, I do welcome the Green Paper published by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence and yes, we are consulted and we were involved in drawing it up.
In the Department of Trade and Industry, many other schemes are running which address the development and support of high-tech industries, not least the link awards, which we are making through the science programme, and the foresight programme, developing the blend between the science and engineering base and industry. The present Government are putting the practical partnerships together—something that was sadly lacking under the previous Administration.

Oral Answers to Questions — Small Businesses

Dr. Starkey: What actions her Department proposes to take to help small businesses avoid cash-flow problems. [31141]

Mr. Singh: What estimate she has made of the damage caused to small businesses by the late payment of commercial debt. [31144]

Mrs. Roche: The Government are determined to ensure that small businesses benefit from the increased competitiveness that a healthy cash flow can bring. That is why we are bringing forward a comprehensive set of proposals to tackle that problem. We also recognise that small firms can maintain a healthy cash flow, and minimise their exposure to late payment and bad debts, by having effective credit management procedures in place.

Dr. Starkey: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. May I pass on to her the appreciation that many businesses in my constituency have expressed of the variety of measures that she has been taking to support small businesses? Will she expand on the measures that are being taken on credit management and debt recovery, both of which are especially important for small businesses?

Mrs. Roche: My hon. Friend will remember that earlier, I spoke about the better payment practice group, which does very good work. That group is about to produce a free guide to credit management and debt recovery, which will be made available through the "Enterprise Zone" and in other ways. It will interest the House to know that we are also supporting the development of an NVQ in credit management, and asking business links and others to assist small firms with their credit management skills.

Mr. Singh: Given the problems faced by small firms in Bradford as a result of late payment, will my hon. Friend

consider commissioning research into best practice and ensure that the results of that research are given to small businesses in my area and other areas?

Mrs. Roche: I can help my hon. Friend considerably. The Department is working with the credit management research group at the university of Bradford which, I believe, is in his constituency, to identify best practice, and to ensure that that information is disseminated to small firms, and to the better payment practice group. I know that the university's work is greatly appreciated, not only in my hon. Friend's constituency, but throughout the United Kingdom, and I know that its work will be very beneficial to the economy of the UK as a whole.

Mr. Evans: Does the Minister agree that it can be damaging to the cash flow of small businesses if money is diverted from the core tasks of those businesses into irrelevant areas? Therefore, will she pay attention to the European Commission's proposals to impose the introduction of work councils for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees? I understand that the Government oppose those proposals but, because we have signed the social chapter, we have given away our veto, so to speak, which would have enabled us to opt out of those arrangements. What do the Government propose to do about that? Does it not show the lunacy of signing up to the social chapter in the first place?

Mrs. Roche: It is interesting to see the hon. Gentleman taking an interest in red tape and the European Union. He will be aware that the previous Government, of which he was a supporter, gold-plated European legislation coming from Brussels and also imposed burden upon burden on small business. It is no wonder that the Conservatives have lost the confidence of the small business community, as the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), who speaks for them on these matters, admits only too readily and, if I may say so to her, very honestly.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: Does the hon. Lady agree with the Hampel committee that small companies need less prescription and form-filling, and more efficiency and competitiveness? They do not require extra interference from Government, extra stakeholders' rights and extra bureaucracy.

Mrs. Roche: I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is, therefore, a great pity that the previous Government, whom he supported, did none of those things. What did this Government do immediately after coming into office? We immediately made sure that half the members of the deregulation group, which is tasked with cutting red tape in government, represented small and medium-sized business. What a difference from the previous Administration, who talked much but delivered little.

Dr. Ladyman: There is a small engineering company in my constituency that has run into cash-flow problems in the past few months. The owner is preparing a report for me, which I am about to pass on to Ministers. It shows that the problems have been brought about by the systematic attempts by large engineering companies to argue about fees, delay payment of debt and force small


engineering companies into difficulties. Can my hon. Friend assure me that the Government will tackle the matter, so that I can tell my constituent that this Government will give him help?

Mrs. Roche: My hon. Friend is right. That is why we are introducing the package of measures, including the Bill dealing with payment of statutory interest. I am delighted that so many large firms now take the issue seriously, because they know that it is important for their own competitiveness and that of small firms and the UK economy as a whole. They are taking steps to ensure prompt payment practices.

Oral Answers to Questions — Investment (Developing Countries)

Mr. David Heath: What assessment she has made of the implications of the draft multilateral agreement on investment for developing countries. [31142]

Mr. Ian McCartney: The Department for International Development has commissioned a study of the implications of the multilateral agreement on investment—MAI—for developing countries, which will be made available in good time for the OECD ministerial meeting at the end of April.

Mr. Heath: I thank the Minister for that reply, and I thank the Minister for Small Firms, Trade and Industry for her helpful contribution to a recent Adjournment debate on that subject. Given the timetable and the widespread interest in the issue, can the Minister say whether the report from the Department for International Development will be available for debate in Parliament or in Committee, and available for consultation with non-governmental organisations, before the meeting of Ministers in April?

Mr. McCartney: I can confirm that the report will be available before the meeting in April.

Mr. MacShane: Has the Minister seen the statement from the OECD on the previous meeting which, in effect, announced that the MAI negotiations would have to continue for one more year, and which stressed in its opening paragraphs the importance of fair labour standards and environmental protection—issues put on the agenda by the Labour Government? Does he agree that that contrasts with the conspiratorial secrecy in which those negotiations were conducted under the previous Administration? Can he assure the House that Labour Ministers will continue to report to Members and the House on the conduct of the MAI negotiations?

Mr. McCartney: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Not a single Conservative Member bothered to turn up and participate in a recent debate in the House on such an important subject. It was left to Labour and Liberal Democrat Members. May I make it clear that

unless we are satisfied that the MAI will not undermine environmental protection and labour standards, we shall not sign it.

Mr. Bercow: Does the Minister share the stated view of the Secretary of State for International Development that the main reason for the Government's support for the insertion of a social clause in any international trading or investment agreement is simply to appease the British trade union movement?

Mr. McCartney: The hon. Gentleman gets sillier every time he speaks in the Chamber. We are trying to provide an international agreement that will ensure for both developing and under-developed countries an improvement in environmental and labour standards. The only contribution that the hon. Gentleman can make to the debate affecting the lives of tens of millions is a stupid schoolboy remark, which is not even worth answering.

Oral Answers to Questions — Economic and Monetary Union

Yvette Cooper: What steps her Department is taking to help British businesses prepare for economic and monetary union. [31143]

Mrs. Beckett: My noble Friend the Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe, who is a Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry and in the Treasury, has been appointed as the Minister responsible for these preparations. He has worked with the Treasury to produce a booklet for business, which will be widely distributed. My noble Friend is now working with the Treasury to emphasise the need for firms to prepare for the single currency in all their regular contacts. There is a Euro preparations unit, which is staffed by the Treasury, the DTI and the private sector, to reinforce that message. We are planning an awareness and information campaign.

Yvette Cooper: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the view expressed by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) in his book on the single currency, which is that Britain should not just stay out, but should attempt to derail the system? Does my right hon. Friend agree that such an approach would be extremely bad for the interests of British businesses, that it would cause turbulence in export markets, that it would weaken links with European suppliers and that it would be a wholly irresponsible and kamikaze thing to do?

Mrs. Beckett: I entirely agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said. However, those outcomes would be entirely consistent with the behaviour of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who seems to be doing everything that he can to scupper the Conservative party's chances.
I note that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), has recently said that the Conservative party seems to be suffering a collective nervous breakdown on the single currency, and that the party cannot happily hold together while those different views are expressed. I share his view. Like my hon. Friend, I condemn the irresponsibility of the right hon. Member for Wokingham. I am sorry that it seems to be so entirely characteristic.

Business of the House

Mrs. Gillian Shephard: May I ask the Leader of the House to give the business for next week?

The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Ann Taylor): The business for next week will be as follows.

MONDAY 9 MARCH—Remaining stages of the National Minimum Wage Bill.

TUESDAY 10 MARCH—Opposition Day [9th Allotted Day]. Until about 7 pm, there will be a debate entitled "Labour's Hidden Taxes", followed by a debate entitled "The Government's Damage to Pensioners' Incomes". Both debates will arise on Opposition motions.

That will be followed by remaining stages of the Fossil Fuel Levy Bill [Lords].

At 10 o'clock, the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.

WEDNESDAY 11 MARCH—Until 2 pm, there will be debates on the motion for the Adjournment of the House.

In the afternoon we shall have proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill.

That will be followed by progress on remaining stages of the School Standards and Framework Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Wireless Telegraphy Bill [Lords].

THURSDAY 12 MARCH—Remaining stages of the European Parliamentary Elections Bill.

FRIDAY 13 MARCH—Private Members' Bills.

The provisional business for the following week will be as follows:

MONDAY 16 MARCH—Second Reading of the Teaching and Higher Education Bill [Lords].

TUESDAY 17 MARCH—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will open his Budget statement.

WEDNESDAY 18 MARCH—Until 2 pm, there will be debates on the motion for the Adjournment of the House.

That will be followed by continuation of the Budget debate.

THURSDAY 19 MARCH—Continuation of the Budget debate, which will be brought to a conclusion on Monday 23 March.

FRIDAY 20 MARCH—Private Members' Bills.

Mrs. Shephard: I thank the Leader of the House for her statement. As I habitually remark—because she habitually makes the arrangements—it is useful to have notice of two weeks' business, although it may have been a little easier for her this week than perhaps it was last week.
Can the right hon. Lady say when we are likely to see the forthcoming legislation relating to the registration of political parties for electoral purposes? The Scotland Bill, the Government of Wales Bill and the European Parliamentary Elections Bill are already well advanced in their progress through the House, and she will agree that their electoral credibility depends on the provisions of the proposed legislation on the registration of political parties.

It clearly is not acceptable that those three constitutional Bills should be expected to complete their passage through the House without at least a first sight of the Government's plans for the registration legislation. I hope that she can help in that respect.
Will the right hon. Lady arrange for a statement from the Secretary of State for Health on the way in which he chose to announce on Monday the rise in prescription charges? His plans seem to have been given to The Independent. They were then confirmed by his own Department, and were fully discussed and debated on radio and television all day—and all that before a written answer at 3.30 pm.
We know that it has become the practice of the Government in the past 10 months to bypass the House, but given that the present Secretary of State for Social Security described last year the announcement by written answer as "sneaking out the news", how would the right hon. Lady describe this year's arrangements? Announced on every channel, save to the House, perhaps.
Will the right hon. Lady arrange for a statement from the Minister for women on the Government's plans for the election of equal numbers of men and women to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh assembly, of which the Secretary of State for Social Security spoke so enthusiastically in last Friday's debate? Newspaper reports tell us—one has to believe them, as that is often the Government's chosen medium of communication—that those plans have been overruled by the Lord Chancellor. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) got rather short shrift from the Prime Minister yesterday when she asked that question. The whole House, not least Scottish and Welsh Members, would welcome clarification on the Government's apparently changed position.
Finally, will the right hon. Lady arrange for an early statement from the Secretary of State for Health on how much red meat the Government propose to allow us to eat? On 28 September, he told the appalled red meat eaters of Britain that, if they were eating an average amount, that was too much, and they had to eat less. Just today, the chief medical officer is telling the same meat eaters, "Forget it—average is okay." I suppose that that is what the Government mean by a "steakholder economy". On behalf of the meat eaters of Britain, I ask for early clarification.

Mrs. Taylor: I shall bring the right hon. Lady's last remarks to the attention of the Secretary of State for Health. The House has taken steps recently to encourage the eating of British beef. I am sure that she will join me in congratulating the Refreshment Department and those who have signed the book supporting the eating of British beef.
On the right hon. Lady's other points, we are making progress on drawing up legislation on the registration of political parties. We originally thought that that might coincide with legislation on the funding of political parties. That will now be a separate matter, because the Neill committee is looking at it in some detail. We hope that more straightforward legislation will be available. I hope that we can discuss that through the usual channels in the not too distant future.
I was interested in what the right hon. Lady said about prescription charges, and especially what she claimed the present Secretary of State for Social Security said last


year. I should remind her of the complaint last year: that prescription charges had increased by an amount above the rate of inflation without a statement being made to the House. The right hon. Lady and Conservative Members should be circumspect in their criticism, given the fact that this year's increase in prescription charges represents the first real-terms cut in the cost of a prescription for 19 years.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made the position clear yesterday on the election of women to the Scottish Parliament. We are committed to increasing the representation of women in political life, and have achieved the highest ever number of women Members of Parliament. There are 101 Labour women Members, so we shall not take lectures from a party with only 14 women Members.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Will my right hon. Friend find time next week for an urgent debate on the consequences of the fire sale of rail rolling stock companies that was held by the previous Government? They threw away state assets with abandon and ruthlessness, and the taxpayer could have benefited from an enormous number of assets if that had not been allowed. Will she ensure not only that the public know what was done by the previous Government, but that an urgent method of getting good value back is sought?

Mrs. Taylor: As usual, my hon. Friend raises an important point, of which I am well aware. Everyone was staggered by the figures revealed today. We said at the time of the privatisation that the Conservative Government were selling the taxpayer short. In fact, that dogma-driven Government have cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. We warned of these difficulties, and it would be good if we had time to discuss the issues. However, the Opposition have chosen not to use their Supply day to debate transport.

Mr. Paul Tyler: I am glad that the Leader of the House shares my disappointment that the Conservatives are not giving two former Secretaries of State, the right hon. Members for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) and for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), the opportunity next Tuesday to defend their complicity in the great rail rip-off, which is now called the great train robbery.
Why have we not yet heard from the Deputy Prime Minister, not only about the matter raised by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody)—the taxpayer was cheated of £1 billion because of undervaluing—but about the takeover bid for Great Western Holdings, which he has apparently put on hold? Again, a huge sum of money was scandalously ripped off the taxpayer because the previous Government insisted on pushing ahead with privatisation for purely political reasons. Is it not time that the Government explained what they propose to do about this appalling situation, and the deteriorating standards faced by customers and users of the railways as a result of what has happened?

Mrs. Taylor: All of us who are customers and users of the railways, which are a civilised way to travel, are concerned about deteriorating standards and the particular problems on some lines. As taxpayers, we are also outraged by the amount of money that the Conservative Government have cost us.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the Deputy Prime Minister has made his views clear on Great Western. The proposal has been put on hold, but the hon. Gentleman was right to say that further measures are required. He will know that the Government are conducting a thorough review of rail regulation. It is not possible to hold a debate in the near future, but the House will want to return to the issue.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the Leader of the House aware that the issue of the railways is becoming a scandal in Britain today? People such as Branson—Mr. Goody Two-Shoes—are picking up taxpayers' money for running trains in the north-west. Taxpayers' money is involved in Eurostar, because we have had to step in to run it temporarily. Now, there is the scandal of people making millions of pounds from selling off rail rolling stock. After 10 months in office, it is high time that the Government realised, just as many of us forecast, that there is only one solution to the problem: British Rail should be taken back into public ownership.

Mrs. Taylor: I have already said that my hon. Friend's concern is shared by many hon. Members on both sides of the House, although I am not sure how some Conservative Members can face their constituents, given the problems that they have created. There is no satisfaction whatever in having been proved right, but, as I have already told my hon. Friend, we are conducting a thorough review of rail regulation.

Mr. Andrew Tyrie: May we please have an early statement from the Prime Minister on the Government's plans to reform the House of Lords? As the Lord Chancellor has revealed that his Cabinet Sub-Committee is already working up proposals for an elected Chamber as part of stage 2 of the reform of the House of Lords, may we have a statement setting out in detail how and when the Government will consult all major parties?

Mrs. Taylor: I presume that the hon. Gentleman was asking for a debate. There are many occasions on which we would like to debate the composition of the House of Lords and the impact of hereditary peers on legislation. We made our position on the House of Lords perfectly clear in our election manifesto, and we are sticking to it.
We said that, as an initial self-contained reform not dependent on further reform in future, the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute. I wish that we had some idea what the Opposition think, as they are sending out such mixed messages. There are clear divisions between different parts of the Conservative party on this, as on most other issues.

Mr. Peter L. Pike: Although I understand that my right hon. Friend will not be able to arrange a debate in the next fortnight on the report of the Modernisation Committee, will she consider sending a copy of that important report on the conduct of Members in the Chamber to all right hon. and hon. Members, so that we can consider its proposals?

Mrs. Taylor: I confirm that the Modernisation Committee has completed a report on the conduct of Members in the Chamber and that it will be published on


Monday. It addresses many issues that have been raised on the Floor of the House by right hon. and hon. Members in the past few months. I hope that it will be a step forward, and that you, Madam Speaker, will welcome it. As my hon. Friend anticipated, I cannot provide time for a debate in the near future, but it is something that the House will wish to consider in due course.

Mr. John Wilkinson: In view of the increasing likelihood that the United Nations arms inspectors will not be allowed to carry out their duties in Iraq unhindered, and in view of the growing racial strife in Kosovo, will the Leader of the House provide time for an early debate on foreign affairs, to reassure right hon. and hon. Members that Her Majesty's Government will not be flouted by two dictators at once—Saddam Hussein and Mr. Milosevic?

Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman knows that, during the recent difficulties with Iraq, the Government kept the House very well informed on all occasions. I cannot promise the early debate he requests, but he will know that there are Foreign and Commonwealth questions on Tuesday.

Mrs. Alice Mahon: Has my right hon. Friend had time to look at early-day motion 873, which highlights the desperate plight of Afghan women living under the Taliban?
[That this House offers its support for the women of Afghanistan who have been stripped of rights taken for granted in this country, who are banned from work and barred from receiving any education, are not allowed to leave home unaccompanied or to speak in public and are forced to wear the all-enveloping burqa and for whom healthcare is almost non-existent, notes that thousands of widows are deprived of the right to earn any livelihood for their families and that their children are forced to scavenge on the streets; therefore calls upon the Government to initiate a campaign at the UN to ensure that the Declaration of Human Rights is respected in Afghanistan, and the rights of women upheld; and further calls upon honourable Members to wear a flower on 8th March to show solidarity with Afghan women.]
I wonder whether, despite the tight legislative timetable, the Leader of the House could provide an urgent debate on an appalling human rights abuse that is really gender apartheid.

Mrs. Taylor: I understand the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend. She will be aware that the United Kingdom is at the forefront of efforts to improve the conditions of women in Afghanistan. We monitor the position carefully, and offer what help we can. She will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has taken a particular interest in the matter. However, I cannot promise her a debate in the near future.

Mr. Laurence Robertson: Will the Leader of the House ask the Minister for School Standards, the hon. Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers), to clarify his statement that any threats of closure to a village school will be called in for a decision?

His statement has caused confusion throughout the country. Councils do not know whether it is a further example of the Government's determination to centralise power, or just an empty gesture to the countryside movement.

Mrs. Taylor: I should have thought that hon. Members on both sides would welcome my hon. Friend's decision. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment and his Ministers should be involved in such important decisions.

Mr. James Wray: Will my right hon. Friend provide time for a debate on credit unions? The new quango, the Financial Services Authority, has given credit unions the shivers. They feel that they will be asked to pay the same amount of support to the FSA as banks.

Mrs. Taylor: I cannot answer my hon. Friend's specific point. He will know that the Government are proposing to publish a draft Bill on financial services regulation. That will allow everyone with an interest to contribute to the consultation period.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Is the Leader of the House aware of the estimate that tourism will become the largest business sector in the world by the millennium? It is a tradition that the House has a Friday morning debate on tourism fairly regularly. Will she consider that request seriously?

Mrs. Taylor: I shall consider that request, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that Fridays in the near future are reserved for private Members' Bills.

Mr. Paul Flynn: When can we have a debate on the national insurance fund, and the welcome news announced on Friday that it has £896 million unallocated for next year? Since that money can be used without infringing the spending limits set down by the previous Government and this Government, will the Government consider applying it to ensure that pensioners have what they have not had since 1980—an increase in their pension linked to the increase in earnings?

Mrs. Taylor: My hon. Friend will know that it is unwise to take a figure in isolation and draw simple conclusions. He will also be aware that we have Treasury questions on Thursday and the Budget the following week. I do not think that it will be possible to have a debate on the specific point that he has raised.

Mr. Eric Forth: May I reinforce the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie)? Will the Leader of the House grant us an urgent debate on the Government's plans for reform of the upper House? Is it not clear that the Government's true intention is to do away with the independence of the upper House, replacing the current structure with a quango full of placemen appointed by the Prime Minister, to ensure that the Government's overriding and dictatorial behaviour in this House is unimpeded by a reformed upper House?

Mrs. Taylor: I would have expected such comments from the right hon. Gentleman. I am not surprised that he


thinks that the so-called independence of the upper House can be equated with an hereditary peerage that predominantly supports the Conservative party. If he thinks that that has anything to do with independence, he has a lot to learn about how the Houses of Parliament work.

Mr. Don Touhig: Has my right hon. Friend seen early-day motion 881, which calls on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales to sack the governing body of the Gwent tertiary college because of serious mismanagement and misuse of European funds?
[That this House expresses its concern at the decision of the governors of Gwent Tertiary College to employ a personnel consultant at a cost of £400 a day, in addition to the £650 a day it paid to another consultant; is disturbed that millions of pounds of European funds were misused; asks for all the reports into the college to be made public; recognises the uncertainty both students and staff at the college face as a result of all the investigations; and calls on the Secretary of State to sack the governors and make the management of further education colleges more open, accountable and representative of the communities they serve.]
Will my right hon. Friend allow time for an early debate on that, so that we can express a view that the governing bodies of further education colleges should be accountable for their actions?

Mrs. Taylor: I agree with my hon. Friend that FE colleges should be fully accountable. He will be aware that the issue of Gwent tertiary college was raised a couple of weeks ago in an Adjournment debate. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister also addressed it yesterday, and asked to be kept informed about what is happening. I am sure that he will be. However, I cannot find time for another debate on that.

Mr. Andrew Stunell: Will the right hon. Lady take particular note of yesterday's debate on the high-speed rail link to the channel tunnel? May I remind her that the issue affects the whole of the United Kingdom, and the north-west as we both know, and is not just a Kent or east London matter? The National Audit Office report shows that the loss on the sale of rolling stock almost exactly equals the missing money needed to complete the link right through to north London. Will she draw that fact to the attention of the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions? Will she ask him to make a full statement on the Government's proposals for the link?

Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman asks me for a statement on the matter, and goes a long way to justifying the House giving the issue more attention. As I said earlier, hon. Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the missing money and the way in which taxpayers were cheated at the time of rail privatisation. I do not need to bring those facts to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who is fully aware of them. My right hon. Friend has said that he will keep the House informed on the high-speed rail link to the tunnel. He made a statement when the emergency first arose, and will certainly be keeping the House informed of developments.

Ms Margaret Moran: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in the past few days, an unarmed

man was shot and killed in his home by Bedfordshire police on the misinformation of a gunman in the vicinity? Is she also aware that, the day before, a family in my constituency received compensation for very similar circumstances, when two young children who were left at home alone were confronted by police gunmen? Will she arrange an early debate to ensure that the matter is fully investigated, so that further such fatalities are avoided?

Mrs. Taylor: The issues that my hon. Friend raises sound very serious indeed; I can well understand her concern. She asks for an early debate, but I do not think that that will be possible. However, a Home Office Minister is present on the Front Bench, and I am sure that he has heard her remarks.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: A little later this month, European Culture Ministers will be visiting Macclesfield to attend a seminar at the excellent Shrigley Hall hotel in a wonderful hill village to the south of Manchester. Unfortunately, this long overdue and justified recognition of Macclesfield comes at a time when its museums are under threat of closure, because Cheshire county council—Labour-controlled—is dramatically cutting the grant for museums. Labour-controlled Cheshire county council blames that on the very unfair revenue support grant settlement given to it by a Labour Government. Will the right hon. Lady arrange for the appropriate Minister to come to the House to deal with future funding of very important local museums, such as the silk heritage museum in Macclesfield?

Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman just about kept a straight face during that question. I hope that he has given his constituency sufficient publicity. He will know that it is Culture, Media and Sport Question Time a week on Monday.

Mr. Christopher Leslie: Can we have a debate next week on the other serious report published yesterday by the Comptroller and Auditor General and the National Audit Office on the supply of Westland helicopters to India under cover of the overseas aid budget? Twenty-one helicopters, costing £50 million, lasted for only six years and were then sold for £900,000. Their sole purpose was to ferry people to and from oil rigs. The Comptroller and Auditor General said that that served absolutely no purpose for the benefit of the poorest people in India. The people responsible—the previous Government—need to be held to account.

Mrs. Taylor: We could spend an awful lot of time in this Chamber debating all the issues for which the previous Government should be held to account. As we are looking to the future and pursuing legislation, we cannot, unfortunately, find time for all debates—even when there is a reasonable request.

Mr. Nigel Evans: Would the Leader of the House arrange for the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to make a statement on any change in Government education policy since 1 May, owing to the fact that Lancashire county council proposes to remove concessionary bus travel from 16 to 18-year-olds who go to sixth-form colleges or sixth-form schools? That will deter many families in Lancashire—I


believe the figure is 7,000—who will now have to find hundreds of pounds for bus travel, or perhaps will not put their child forward for further education. Has not education, education, education been replaced by back-door tax, back-door tax, back-door tax?

Mrs. Taylor: I wish that we had time to discuss all the measures taken by Education Ministers which have been so positive—not least the vast amount of money that we are putting into education which the previous Government denied to schools. Education is being improved in a range of areas—smaller classes, more money for books and a raft of other measures which are necessary because of the failures of the previous Government.

Mr. Derek Twigg: May I return to the subject of the Hillsborough scrutiny of evidence report, which has been raised in the House previously? Again, I ask the Government to find time to debate the report on the Floor of the House. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the anger and frustration in Merseyside and beyond, which has been fuelled by the fact that we have been unable to find time for a debate. I urge her to find time as a matter of urgency. It may not be possible to have a debate this side of Easter, but could she perhaps arrange for a debate as soon as possible after Easter? It would be seen as a positive response if she could give some indication today.

Mrs. Taylor: Hon. Members have raised this issue in previous weeks, and I must refer to what I said then. However much we understand the concerns of those who have been affected, it is difficult to find time in the near future for a debate on this important report. I know that hon. Members who feel concerned about the matter have looked at ways of trying to get an hour-and-a-half Adjournment debate on the subject. I understand what my hon. Friend describes as the frustration and anger of hon. Members who want a full debate. I share his concern, as does the Home Secretary. We would like to be able to find time for a debate. He is right to say that there is no possibility of finding time before Easter. I will look at the possibilities after Easter, but I cannot give him a specific date—although we understand the nature and depth of the concerns that are felt.

Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: Does the Leader of the House understand why there has been such a concerted campaign to get a debate on her Government's proposals on the composition of the upper House? After all, it is clear that the Government intend to abolish the hereditary principle, but we do not know their intentions on the composition of the upper House in the future. Unless that is answered, we have no way of knowing whether what will be put in its place is any better or not.

Mrs. Taylor: I am interested to hear from the hon. Gentleman that there has been a concerted effort to get a debate on the upper House. This is the first business questions at which the matter has been mentioned. If that constitutes a concerted campaign by the Opposition, they still have a great deal to learn. If he thinks that this issue should take priority, perhaps he should have persuaded his Front-Bench colleagues to use an Opposition day for it.

Mr. Gordon Prentice: As my right hon. Friend knows, the Wild Mammals (Hunting with Dogs)

Bill returns to the Floor of the House tomorrow, but it may fall through lack of time. Is it possible, at this eleventh hour, for my right hon. Friend and the Government to follow the precedent set by my predecessor Sydney Silverman—the then Member for Nelson and Colne—on the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, when the Government, under the Prime Minister Harold Wilson, allocated nine Wednesday mornings? Surely it must be possible for the Government to allocate time, perhaps on a Tuesday or Thursday morning, which would not eat into Government business, to allow the Bill to succeed.

Mrs. Taylor: I am not sure that it is time that is the enemy of the Bill. Time is available for it to progress if the opponents respect the overwhelming support that it has.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: Will the right hon. Lady return to the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson)? Is she aware that, this weekend, the Prime Minister will be meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel? Given the serious stalling of the peace process and the continuing crisis with Iraq, will she please drop her churlish reply to my hon. Friend and agree that, although the Government behaved correctly—rightly so, since there was a possibility of British troops being committed to action—she should make time for the Prime Minister to make a statement to the House on his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and to answer questions on the peace process as well as wider middle east questions?

Mrs. Taylor: Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have made it clear that they set great store by trying to make progress on the peace process in the middle east. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman supports what was done about Iraq—he made that clear at the time. I hope that he will also accept that the Government are endeavouring to make progress in those peace talks. We all have a responsibility there as well, and Ministers are giving those talks as much priority as possible.

Mr. John McDonnell: My right hon. Friend will be aware that, in local government, when councillors make a reckless decision that incurs a loss to their local authority, they are surcharged. When we debate the sale of the rolling stock leasing companies, would my right hon. Friend consider producing retrospective legislation to surcharge those Ministers responsible for the loss of £1 billion to the public purse? Will she also consider producing legislation that would inflict another windfall tax on those who profiteered from the sale, which would obviate the need for student fees?

Mrs. Taylor: Although it might be tempting to have retrospective surcharges of the sort my hon. Friend describes, it is not feasible.

Mr. Paul Burstow: Will the Leader of the House tell us whether, on 20 March, when the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill comes before the House for its Second Reading, the Government will allow time for it to have a proper Second Reading debate? If there were time for such a debate, it


would be interesting to explore the different views of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister on local government reform.
On the one hand, on Tuesday the Deputy Prime Minister proffered an olive branch of co-operation and partnership with local government, and, on the other, the Prime Minister yesterday wielded a big stick and told local government that, unless it did what he wanted, its services would be taken away. Which is it going to be, and can we have such a debate?

Mrs. Taylor: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was going to draw attention to a useful Bill and support it. Had he done so, I would gladly have agreed with him, although there is no prospect of any extra time—it is a private Member's Bill, and it will join the list in the normal way. In trying to manufacture a division, his comments were just plain silly.

Dr. George Turner: Does my right hon. Friend recognise that many Labour Members who represent rural constituencies would warmly welcome a debate on the future of the village school? Those village schools that managed to survive the previous Government, who oversaw the closure of between 90 and 100 schools in my county, mainly in villages, warmly welcomed the Government's brief announcement last week, but hon. Members know that village schools face genuine problems in maintaining academic standards, and local education authorities face problems in properly funding them. Therefore, a full debate would be of particular benefit to the House.

Mrs. Taylor: As I said, many positive statements have come out of Government recently on which I would like to be able to find time for a full debate. It would be good to contrast the statement of my hon. Friend with the pathetic record of Conservative Members when they were in government, as they closed 450 rural schools. With that record, it is perhaps not surprising that they do not know the difference between Saturday and Sunday.

Mr. David Drew: Will my right hon. Friend, in liaison with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, consider holding a debate on the implications of the Krebs report on bovine tuberculosis? There is a growing awareness that some of the report's recommendations may not be practicable, and an examination of this growing problem—which is probably second only to bovine spongiform encephalopathy—is long overdue.

Mrs. Taylor: The Krebs report recommended a package of measures which, taken together, provide a coherent basis for moving forward. We have consulted on

the report to find the best way of implementing the measures. The consultation period ended only last week, and the Government are currently considering the views that were submitted. The House will be informed of decisions in due course, but I am afraid that I do not think that it will be possible to have a debate along the lines that my hon. Friend suggests.

Mr. David Watts: Is my right hon. Friend aware that house price gazumping has returned to England? Will she make time available to discuss how my constituents in St. Helens can enjoy the same protection as the constituents of our Scottish colleagues?

Mrs. Taylor: We all have constituents who have faced problems because of gazumping, which has, at times, been rampant and caused many difficulties. My hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Housing is issuing a consultative paper, as we take the problem seriously and want to establish whether we can protect people who currently feel extremely vulnerable.

Sir Patrick Cormack: Can the right hon. Lady give us an assurance today, rather than next week? She will be aware of the point of order that I raised yesterday in the House. Does she agree that the Opposition have tried to be wholly supportive and constructive in the work of the Modernisation Committee and in the timetabling of the Bills that are currently before the House? Does she accept that, if timetabling is to work, there must be no repeat of yesterday's events, when a statement—it was not urgent or of international importance—took up one hour of the three hours that had been allocated for a debate on a crucial feature of the Scotland Bill? I know that she has tried to be entirely constructive in these matters, and I ask for an assurance that she will use her best endeavours to ensure that what happened yesterday never occurs again.

Mrs. Taylor: I am not sure that I can give the entire assurance that the hon. Gentleman wants. The Business Committee, which decides about business on the programme motion, takes into account the possibility of statements. Opposition Members often criticise us for not making the statements that they want. I should point out that Conservative Front Benchers asked 24 questions about the statement yesterday—clearly, some Conservative Members thought that it was important.
Conservative Members may ask why we did not make the statement on another day, but if we had made it the day before, it would have taken time from the Supply day, which is something that we have so far managed to avoid doing. We made the statement on the day that had been decided. The Opposition want statements, but when we make them, they complain, and when we do not make them, they complain.

Points of Order

Mr. Gerald Howarth: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I want to raise a point of order relating to the Green Paper that was issued today by the Ministry of Defence. This morning, The Daily Telegraph carried a large article entitled, "Agency will help arms firms tap civilian markets", in which it was reported that the Secretary of State for Defence was likely to unveil plans today to set up a defence diversification agency involving the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, whose headquarters is in my constituency of Aldershot.
I inquired whether a statement would be made to the House today, but was told that the announcement would be made by way of written answer. When I made further inquiries, I discovered that a press conference was held this morning at the Ministry of Defence, at which journalists were able to question Ministers about these very serious proposals, which go to the heart of the defence industry. Members of Parliament, however, including many who have DERA sites in their constituencies, have had no opportunity to question Ministers. It is clear that the article in The Daily Telegraph today is based extensively on briefings provided by the Ministry of Defence.
On a point of principle, you have made it clear to the House that you expect important announcements to be made first to the House rather than to the world outside, although I accept that we are talking about a Green Paper. I would be grateful if you would rule on this matter, because I feel that we have been denied an opportunity to question Ministers that was given to others outside the House.

Madam Speaker: As the hon. Gentleman said, it is a Green Paper. According to my inquiries, the press conference to which he refers took place after the written answer and the Green Paper were made available to Members of Parliament. I understand that all the proper procedures were correctly followed.

Mr. Howarth: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. It is true that the Green Paper was placed in the Vote Office shortly before midday, but it is not true that the written question and answer were placed in the Library before the press conference started. The Library has informed me that the question and answer arrived at 12.30 pm, which is half an hour after the press conference started.

Madam Speaker: The question was:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when he intends to publish the Government's Green Paper on Defence Diversification.
The answer was:
We have today published our Green Paper 'Defence Diversification: Getting the most out of defence technology', as Command Paper No. 3861. Copies are available from the Vote Office. There will now be a period of consultation.

Mr. Tim Loughton: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek your assistance, as the guardian of Back Benchers, over the debate on Tuesday evening on individual savings accounts and personal equity plans, and to the specific procedures used by the Paymaster General.
I tabled a written question to the Paymaster General last month, asking whether the findings of the consultation exercise on ISAs and PEPs that ended at the end of January could be published and the full findings placed in the Library for the use of all Members. He refused that request, and said merely that a summary of submissions would be made available, probably after the Budget.
It was clear on Tuesday evening that the Paymaster General was using submissions from investment houses and individuals, and quoting them selectively. The gist of the full documents was in fact rather contrary to the case that he was trying to make. Would it not be in the best interests of good debate in the House if he made all those consultation findings fully available in the Library, so that we can all be fully informed for debate in the future?

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman does not give me the status of the papers to which he refers. If they are state papers, of course they must be made available. It appears from what he says that they are not state papers, so they do not have to be made available. Let me make it clear to the hon. Gentleman and to the House that I will not take points of order about the quality of ministerial answers. That is not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You may recall that, about two weeks ago, I raised with the Leader of the House a matter relating to the slackness and impertinence of some Ministers in not signing correspondence to Members of Parliament. The right hon. Lady, extremely courteously, said that she would make representations on behalf of both Government and Opposition Members. Since that complaint, I have had five unsigned letters from Ministers.
I regard it as wholly unacceptable, as I am sure you do, Madam Speaker, that, when constituents write to Members of Parliament to make inquiries of Ministers and the Government on matters relating to Government policy, we do not receive duly signed letters. Will you, on behalf of the whole House, make representations to the Government asking them to cease that practice forthwith, and to ensure that Ministers sign their letters?

Mr. Nick Hawkins: rose—

Madam Speaker: No, I can deal with this, thank you.
I am entirely in sympathy with the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames). It happens to me as Speaker that I get letters unsigned by Ministers, and my office sends them back. It may delay matters, but it is worth it in the long run. Those on the Government Front Bench know my views on this, as do various Secretaries of State. I suggest that all hon. Members do likewise.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. This afternoon, I watched the proceedings of the House on television in my office. I noticed that some hon. Members are heard clearly on the microphone system, but others, sitting in other parts of the House, are not so clearly heard. One example this afternoon was the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans): it was hard to hear what he was saying. I put that down not to editorial interference by the BBC, but to bad positioning of the microphones.
The other day, an elderly constituent raised the issue with me. I carried out an experiment, and I am now reporting the findings. I ask your assistance, Madam Speaker, in suggesting to the BBC that it should use better or more directional microphone systems, so that all hon. Members can be heard, even if they are talking rubbish.

Madam Speaker: That is a most interesting point of order, but I would also encourage hon. Members to project their voices.

Mr. Hawkins: Further to the point of order raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), Madam Speaker. You have said that you have been the victim of unsigned correspondence. This morning, in response to a letter I sent to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, I did not receive a letter, signed or unsigned: my letter was returned simply with a yellow, sticky, Post-it note attached, on which had been scrawled a note by some person in the office of the Secretary of State. I have no doubt that, had you received such a response, your views would have been even stronger than those you expressed about unsigned ministerial correspondence. Will you therefore reinforce the point that such practices are to be even more greatly deplored?

Madam Speaker: As I have not received a sticky yellow note returning my correspondence, I can hardly comment.

BILLS PRESENTED

PORTS OF ENTRY (SPECIAL STATUS)

Mr. Gwyn Prosser, supported by Mr. Andrew Mackinlay, Mr. Ivan Henderson, Laura Moffatt, Mr. Derek Wyatt, Ms Jackie Lawrence, Dr. Stephen Ladyman, Mr. Nick Ainger, Mr. Robert Syms, Mrs. Louise Ellman, Dr. Alan Whitehead and Mr. Norman Baker, presented a Bill to make provision for special status for ports of entry to the United Kingdom so far as the law affecting local government and policing is concerned; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 24 April, and to be printed [Bill 137].

RECYCLED CONTENT OF NEWSPRINT

Mr. David Chaytor, supported by Mrs. Helen Brinton, Mr. John Austin, Mr. David Lepper, Mr. Stephen Pound, Mr. Tom Brake, Mr. Norman Baker, Mr. Matthew Taylor, Sir Sydney Chapman, Mr. Peter Bottomley, Mr. Cynog Dafis and Rev. Martin Smyth, presented a Bill to increase the amount of recycled paper used in newsprint in the United Kingdom; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 24 April, and to be printed [Bill 138].

Orders of the Day — European Parliamentary Elections Bill

Considered in Committee [Progress, 26 February].

[MR. MICHAEL J. MARTIN in the Chair]

Clause 5

COMMENCEMENT

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): Clause 5 was the subject of some interesting discussion last Thursday. Briefly, the clause will enable the Secretary of State to appoint the day of commencement of the Bill's provisions, by way of a statutory instrument. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) tabled several amendments that would delay the commencement of the Bill's provisions. He would like Parliament, through the affirmative resolution procedure, to decide whether the Act should be brought into force, even though Parliament would have already approved the measures. The Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Ms Quin) explained that there was no justification for the use of the affirmative resolution procedure in that case and no precedent for such a measure.
The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire would also like us to wait until the Neill Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Jenkins commission on the voting system have reported, even though neither body is considering issues related to elections to the European Parliament.
It has also been proposed that parties must secure democratic approval at regional level of the party lists and the order in which the candidates' names appear. I know of no instance of a Government interfering in the internal affairs of political parties. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire may wish for that, given his party's difficulties, but I do not think that he seriously wants it. The Conservative party is clutching at straws and seeking to delay commencement by any means possible. Clause 5 simply allows the date of commencement to be determined in the usual way.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

SHORT TITLE

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. George Howarth: Clause 6 provides that, if enacted, the Bill will become the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1998.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New clause 2

CONDUCT OF ELECTIONS (TRAINING OF ELECTION STAFF)

'.—(1) The Secretary of State shall—

(a) publish a detailed training manual for persons directly concerned in the conduct of elections under this Act and the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1978; and
(b) establish and publish details of a standard of proficiency which is to be achieved by such persons.

(2) Local authorities shall certify to Parliament the number of persons achieving the standard established under subsection (1)(b) above.'.—[Mr. Clappison.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. James Clappison: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael J. Martin): With this, it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—Application of this Act to elections to be subject to implementation of section (Conduct of elections (training of election staff))—
'.The provisions of this Act shall apply only in the case of an election held more than twelve months after the requirements of section (Conduct of elections (training of election staff)) have been met.'.

Mr. Clappison: The new clauses deal with training for the new election system. Their purpose is to uphold our valued tradition of well-conducted elections, which the Minister will join me in wanting to maintain. They simply require the Secretary of State to publish a training manual for persons concerned in the conduct of the elections and to establish and publish details of a standard of proficiency for them, and that the system is in place in good time for the European parliamentary elections.
In all fairness, the Government must accept that the new system will be unfamiliar both to electors and to those charged with the conduct of elections. As we have said before in Committee, the simplicity of the new system, which the Home Secretary valiantly paraded as one of its virtues, has not been entirely self-evident during our proceedings. If he found the task of making the requisite divisions and understanding the difference between d'Hondt and Sainte-Lague difficult, we do not think that it will any easier for those charged with the conduct of elections to carry out the necessary calculations and operations. We think that the Minister will welcome the opportunity to say a little more about how the Government plan to equip the people who will run the elections, to ensure that they run smoothly and efficiently.
We note from the explanatory and financial memorandum that the Government estimate the cost of training for those operating the system at £4 million. The Government owe us a little more detailed explanation of that cost. How does it compare with the cost of training staff for previous European elections under the present system? Is it a one-off cost or will it continue to be incurred in future European elections? I hope that the Minister will be eager to give details of the training that the Government plan to give those who will conduct the elections. I think that he agrees that it is important that the Committee should be reassured that they will be properly trained, and that that training will be carried out in good time for the elections. Therefore, can the Minister tell the

Committee a little more about the details of the training? Can he tell us, for example, on what basis those who are to be trained will be selected? Who will train them? I should welcome a response from the hon. Gentleman on those two specific points.
I would also appreciate a response from the Minister on whether any qualifications or experience will be required on the part of those responsible for training. What is the Government's time scale for the training? Can we be assured that the training that the Government plan will be in time for the elections? That is an important feature of our new clause. We want the training to be done in good time.
I have to say to the Minister—I do not think that I am being unkind—that I have not been entirely impressed by the progress of the legislation so far, the way in which it has been introduced or the changes that have had to be made. We want to be reassured that the problems that have occurred with the calculations of proportionality will not recur when it comes to training those who will conduct the elections. We want the Government to reassure us that the training will be carried out in good time.
Can the Minister tell us a little more about the arrangements for counting the votes by those who have been trained? For example, will the votes for one of the new large regions be counted at a single regional venue, or will there be multiple counts? If there are to be multiple counts throughout the region, on what basis will the locations be chosen?
Will the Minister tell us a little about the training of those who will do the calculations after the votes have been counted? I have raised a number of issues with him. I emphasise that we want to know how those who will do the calculations will be trained. We know that people in other countries have to do such calculations, but the calculations are new to this country and it is possible that mistakes will be made. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman joins us in not wishing to see the integrity and standing of our electoral system undermined by any mistakes. We want to see that people are well trained in advance, in doing what may sometimes be fairly complex calculations.
In the same vein, we should like to know where the calculations will be done. If there are multiple counts, will the calculations be done at the regional venue? If not, where will they be done?
The new clauses have been tabled in a helpful spirit. We hope that the Government will want to tell us a little more about the operation of the new system. It is fair to say that it is not an entirely simple system. It will be very new. We want to be reassured that its conduct will be up to the standards that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have come to expect of the conduct of elections, which is a tradition of long standing in this country that we want to see maintained.

Mr. George Howarth: The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) explained the reasoning behind the new clauses, but I am not entirely convinced that he has introduced them in a deeply serious way, although he asked some questions that I shall try my best to answer. I am not convinced, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman really is, that it is really necessary to include in the Bill the sort of detail that he suggests on training, but I shall cover the issues.
The Government's recognition of the need to train officers on the ground to use the new electoral system is clearly stated in the Bill, as the hon. Gentleman conceded. The Bill's explanatory and financial memorandum gives an estimate of £4 million for that purpose, and clause 4 provides for that cost to be met from the Consolidated Fund. That £4 million is a one-off cost; but because a subsequent Parliament may make changes to the legislation, it is not possible to say that there will never be a repetition. One cannot look into the future, but if changes were made in future, additional resources would be necessary to carry out extra training for the new system.
Officials in the Home Office are already holding discussions with the relevant bodies, in particular the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and the Association of Electoral Administrators. The hon. Gentleman asked whether a certificate or diploma qualification would be available and, although I am not aware of any plans to introduce a specific qualification for these European elections, I spoke at the Association of Electoral Administrators conference in Plymouth last week and awarded the first diplomas in competence in electoral administration, so I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is a proper certificate and that the curriculum includes European elections, in addition to all other forms of election. Therefore, there will be a certificate available and, although it will not be necessary in every case to hold that certificate, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman questions the competence of the electoral administrators we already use.

Mr. Clappison: I take it that the Minister has moved on from the question of cost, but before leaving it entirely, can he make it absolutely clear how the £4 million compares with the cost of training those conducting elections in the past? Is the £4 million a new cost?

Mr. Howarth: I am not in a position to provide that information. If, after discussions with the electoral administrators and others, that sum proves inadequate or compares unfavourably with previous costs, we shall take that into account. If, after checking the substance of the hon. Gentleman's question, I find that there is some difference, I shall let him know in writing.
The local authority chief executives and the electoral administrators are confident that they will be able to operate the new system without any undue problems. I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the men and women who are involved in the conduct of elections: they perform a valuable service and do so capably and professionally. In changing the voting system for future elections to the European Parliament, the Government appreciate that the job carried out by those officers will change. We shall assist local authorities as much as we can in preparing for that change, but we shall not take the unprecedented step of dictating the sort of training required and burdening them with draconian performance standards; nor do we wish the introduction of the new system to be postponed by an arbitrary period of delay.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the location of counts and of the calculation of the aggregates on a regional basis. My recollection is that counts will be conducted at parliamentary constituency level and that the aggregation of those results into a regional result will be

carried out at a regional centre, according to a formula—either the one on the face of the Bill, or some other formula that has been agreed subsequently.
The Opposition are intent on preventing the new system from coming into force by any means they can devise. They have already shown that in their previous amendments, and they are doing so again in these new clauses. Although the new clauses raise subjects that are worthy of debate, they are not worthy of incorporation in the Bill. Unlike the Opposition, we recognise and acknowledge that the traditions of the electoral officers mean that they will be able to cope with the new system with their normal admirable ability. They will be properly trained, and I am confident that they will maintain their current high level of professionalism throughout 1999 and beyond. If the hon. Member for Hertsmere has the same regard for me as I am sure he does for those proficient officials, I am sure that he will feel inclined to withdraw the motion.

Mr. Richard Allan: I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) say that his new clauses were helpful, not obstructive. New clause 3, in proposing an arbitrary 12-month delay, seemed to us an ingenious method of trying to derail the 1999 timetable, but we stand corrected on that. I was also pleased that the Conservatives were able to congratulate our election staff on the work that they do, and I was pleased to hear those congratulations echoed by the Minister.
It seems to be a feature of the debate about more proportional systems that opponents of proportionality tend to overstate the complexity of such systems. In fact, similar systems are used throughout the world, in many different arenas. Moreover, anyone who has watched election staff trying to do a multiple local government by-election count, perhaps at the same time as a general election count, knows that we already have a fair degree of complexity in our system, and that our staff are perfectly able to cope with it.
Liberal Democrats do not believe that it is necessary to have a doctorate in electoral systems, or to have completed a—

Mr. Martin Linton: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) did not say that the systems were complex—he said merely that he did not understand them?

Mr. Allan: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. One of the key features of debate on the Bill is that all of us have increased our understanding of more proportional systems. I hope that, as they come to understand such systems, Conservative Members will recognise their value and change their position, as they are changing their position on many constitutional issues.
In our view, it is unnecessary for the people responsible for the conduct of elections to have written a dissertation on the inherent differences between d'Hondt and Sainte-Lague, or to have passed a training course, and such provisions need not be in the Bill. We see no need to support the new clauses. We hope that Conservative Members, having heard the Minister's reassurances on the


training of our staff and having praised their quality, will accept that that quality will be perfectly sufficient to cope with the system that the Bill will introduce.

Mr. Robert Syms: I shall speak in support of new clause 2. Scrutineers from political parties play an important part in the electoral process, but the role of agents has not yet been mentioned. Under our current system, agents have a legal position vis-à-vis the candidates and, if they get things wrong in terms of expenditure, they can go to prison.
We are to have a new electoral system as a result of the Bill. Some time, registration of parties may well have to be introduced. Inevitably, the time will come when we must decide whether to have an agent system as before, and whether imprisonment is to be a penalty. Given the size of the electoral areas and the fact that a Conservative party agent or a Labour party agent for, let us say, the South East, may face legal penalties if things are not done correctly, publication of any training manuals on the conduct of elections would be useful, not only for the local government officers and others who deal with the election, but for the political party agents, who may have to scrutinise and/or risk objections or legal action. Such eventualities are quite likely, especially under a new system, and especially as candidates might not wholly understand the implications of what is going on at the count.
Therefore, it is sensible, if the system is to work and deliver a result, that we publish manuals to enable the political party agents to understand the ground rules, so that when the count takes place, and when expenses must be accounted for, everyone knows the ground rules.
The Minister may say that this is not the most appropriate moment to discuss that matter, but I believe that the Government must address the issues concerning agents, expenditure and possible imprisonment. Is it practical to expect an agent for the region of the South East, responsible for millions of voters and perhaps thousands of party workers, to be confronted with imprisonment, and is it practical to expect an individual to control an election campaign in the traditional sense? Those issues must be considered, and I should be grateful for the Minister's comments.

Mr. Mike Hancock: I am delighted to be given the chance to say a few words.
The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) was somewhat pessimistic—but, I suppose, realistic—in his appraisal of the Tories' misfortune on 1 May. Perhaps the Conservatives are looking for a delaying tactic, to give them more chance of putting together a substantial case when the elections come. His speech was also a pessimistic appraisal of the education system, which the Conservative party lorded over for 18 years, because it implied that, in the 15 months before the elections take place, we cannot educate the electoral officers responsible for running and managing those elections, to equip them to do their job successfully.
4.45 pm
I have fought 25 elections in the past 30 years at three different levels, so I have some experience of elections

going wrong. As someone who has been on the wrong end of two very narrow counts to get elected, or re-elected, to the House, I know too well of the arguments that occur because of the inadequacies of the system.
However, my worries relate not so much to the system that the Government will resource, or to training—although it is important—as to local government's failure to honour its commitment to the democratic process. For too long, local government has tried to get away with conducting the democratic process—that is, elections and the preparation of electoral registers—on the cheap.
We are about to embark on a new system, which the public will have to understand. I am sure that they will embrace it with enthusiasm, and will come to regard it as the system on which they would want all elections to be based. At such a time, it is important that local government—which has a responsibility to furnish up-to-date registers of electors, to inform the public and to run elections properly—is given the resources to enable it to fulfil that responsibility, so that it cannot make the excuse that mistakes were the Government's responsibility.
I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the training for which he would be responsible. Part of that responsibility must be pushed down to local government level, but it must be accompanied by sufficient resources. I should like an assurance—

Mr. David Drew: Does the hon. Gentleman consider that he is being rather broad-brush in his criticism? My local authority, Stroud district council, puts a great deal of resources and time into training and informing representatives and agents on how the election process will work. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that there is good practice in local government, and that it needs to be promoted.

Mr. Hancock: I entirely agree, and I sympathise with other hon. Members who have had bad experiences in elections. I know from first-hand experience over 30 years of the frustration of the person whose name is not on the electoral register—the person who takes time and trouble to inform the local authority that they live at a specific address, only to find that nothing is done about putting their name on the register. Too many such examples exist, but I welcome the hon. Gentleman's intervention in pointing out the good practice.
However, I seek a real assurance from the Minister that the training will not be confined to one level—that it will go right down the system, so that everyone involved in the elections has a fundamental grasp of what is expected of them. If that is done, we shall have, in 15 months' time, a successful new episode in the practice of democracy in our country, of which we can all be proud.

Mr. George Howarth: I shall try to cover as many as possible of the issues that have been mentioned.
In answer to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), we are consulting those responsible, both at chief executive level and electoral administrator level, and I believe that any difficulties that they have will be resolved. I am confident that, given their professionalism and the consultation exercise that is taking place, we can resolve some of the difficulties.
I was just trying to calculate how many elections I have stood in. I must have stood in fewer elections than the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South, but I have probably stood in about 12 or 14, at two levels—local authority and parliamentary. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I have been fortunate, in that I have never failed to be elected. However, I concede that, in the seats for which I stood, there was little chance of any other result.
I should correct a false impression that I may have given the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison). I said, wrongly, that the counts would be carried out at constituency level. In fact, the intention is that they will be carried out at local authority level. I apologise for that and set the record straight.
On the role and responsibilities of agents, which was raised by the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms), there will be a single agent per list. That is the only way of resolving the problem. Although, as the hon. Gentleman says, it will be a more complicated role than that of an agent on a single constituency level, it will be better to have one agent per region for the list than to fragment the region into a number of constituencies.

Mr. Syms: I am glad to hear what the Minister says. It would be more sensible to have one agent for the entire region, but there are a number of wrangles and difficulties. What happens when a minor party—an odd and a sod—wants a recount of a whole region? Such questions must be sorted out in more detail. Under current law, there is considerable precedent—thick files of "Parker's Election Laws" and so on—to which one can turn. We are in a new ball game with the proposed system. The Government and others must get together to get the ground rules right.

Mr. Howarth: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there are established procedures for requesting a recount, for example. It will be the responsibility, technically, of the agent to demonstrate to the returning officer or his or her representative that the required threshold exists to justify such a request. That could be done by the agent for the list in a region or by the agent for an individual named candidate on the ballot paper. Such details will be discussed in the training that we propose. I am confident that the i's can be dotted and the t's crossed in those details.
To answer the hon. Gentleman's further question, it will still be the agent's responsibility to ensure that he controls his party's electoral expenditure within the legal and agreed limits. All of that will be covered in regulations under schedule 2, which amends schedule 1 to the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1978.
Whether intentionally or not, this has been a useful debate. We have covered various nuts-and-bolts issues, so perhaps the system will be better understood. I hope that as a result of those reassurances, the hon. Member for Hertsmere will consider it prudent to withdraw the motion.

Mr. Clappison: I am grateful to the Minister for the spirit in which he responded to the debate, which was introduced as a serious matter and which, as he says, has proved useful. I was slightly surprised by the partisan comments from some quarters, in view of the reasonably non-partisan way in which I introduced the new clause.
The hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) referred in an intervention to the degree of understanding of the system on the part of various hon. Members. I did not say that I do not understand it—I never professed to do so. I said that the Home Secretary had got it wrong and made a mistake.
If the hon. Gentleman was present earlier in the Committee's proceedings, he will have heard the Home Secretary commendably and frankly acknowledge that he had been mistaken in what he told the House on Second Reading about the basis of the system. I do not think that the Under-Secretary will be particularly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter because, as I recollect, it was the Under-Secretary who had to put the record straight in a written answer after the Home Secretary got it wrong. I do not think that he will thank the hon. Gentleman for that reminder.
I have one other piece of advice for the Minister. He should not listen too closely to Liberal Democrat Members. They seem to be in an awful rush to enact the Bill. We think that in this case undue haste would be the midwife of chaos, which is the last thing that we want. We want a system that upholds our valued traditions of efficiently conducted elections, which hon. Members in all parts of the House will value. That is the spirit in which we tabled the two new clauses.
I put numerous questions to the Minister. They were serious questions, as he recognises. I should be grateful if he would reply to me in writing on the matters that he did not cover in his response to the debate. In that spirit, and in order not to delay the Committee, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 1

NEW SCHEDULE 2 TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS ACT 1978

Mr. John Greenway: I beg to move amendment No. 59, in page 6, line 6, leave out '6' and insert '7'.

The First Deputy Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 60, in page 6, line 10, column 2, at end insert—

'County of North East
Lincolnshire
County of North
Lincolnshire'.

No. 61, in page 6, line 27, column 1, leave out 'East'.

No. 63, in page 6, line 27, column 2, at beginning insert—
'County of Cumbria'.

No. 62, in page 6, line 27, column 3, leave out '4' and insert '5'.

Government amendment No. 30.

No. 64, in page 6, line 35, column 3, leave out '10' and insert '9'.

No. 65, in page 6, line 38, column 2, leave out 'County of Cumbria'.

Government amendments Nos. 31 and 32.

No. 66, in page 7, line 38, column 1, leave out '& The Humber'.

No. 67, in page 7, leave out lines 42 and 43.

Mr. Greenway: This group of amendments provides the Committee with a further opportunity to reflect on the


proposed electoral regions in the scheme proposed by the Bill and to question again whether they are the most appropriate.
I begin with a simple question: how does anyone know? There has been no public consultation, no White Paper, no review by the boundary commission. As I reminded the Committee in an earlier debate on the number of electoral regions, the involvement of the boundary commission was thought so important by the Prime Minister when he was shadow Home Secretary that, when the House considered those matters, the then Opposition would not support the creation of additional constituencies for the European Parliament in the United Kingdom. If the involvement of the boundary commission were so important then, why is it not necessary to consult the boundary commission now?
It is conceivable that some parts of England, especially, may have been placed in the wrong region. Our argument this evening is about not size, but the regional boundaries. The Minister, like the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Ms Quin), on a previous occasion in Committee, will no doubt tell us that the regions chosen by the Government are in effect the regions of the Government offices, which were introduced by the previous Government. However, it was not proposed that those regions should become electoral regions for the European Parliament. The previous Government's view is not a mandate for the imposition of the map for electoral purposes. There could be numerous examples of inappropriate boundaries. In the amendments, we have selected two examples.
The first concerns North and North East Lincolnshire. As a result of local government boundary commission changes, we have got rid of the county of Humberside and we have a unitary authority containing both North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire, and Lincolnshire county council. Why is it appropriate to keep North and North East Lincolnshire with Yorkshire and to call that region Yorkshire and The Humber, and not to put North and North East Lincolnshire in with the rest of Lincolnshire, where we believe it would be more appropriately placed?
In an earlier debate, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) even questioned whether Lincolnshire ought to be in the East Midlands, and whether it should more appropriately be placed in the Eastern England electoral region. One can understand why. It is a largely rural county, which would be better placed with rural counties such as Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
We think—I ask the Minister seriously to consider this—that, having got rid of a boundary for local government, reinstating that boundary for the electoral regions for the European Parliament is bound to cause confusion in the minds of electors. That confusion will be all the greater because North East Lincolnshire, especially, is part of the Lincolnshire and Humberside South European parliamentary constituency. The MEP who represents those areas now will not be able to represent all of them in future, if she is successful in the election, because some of them will be in Yorkshire.
My second example relates to Cumbria. It is valid to ask whether Cumbria should be in the North West or the North East. Given Government statistical regions in

the past, Cumbria has always been linked with Northumbria and Durham as part of the north. Indeed, Cumbria forms part of the Northern and Yorkshire regional health authority.

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Mr. John Hutton: Not true.

Mr. Greenway: Before the debate took place, I took the opportunity of telephoning the office of the chairman of the authority on that point.

Mr. Hutton: If the hon. Gentleman had done his homework, he would realise that the south of the county, in the area which I represent, is part of the North West regional health authority.

Mr. Greenway: The hon. Gentleman is right in that a tiny part of south Cumbria is in the North West RHA, but the major part of Cumbria, certainly in geographical terms, is in the Northern and Yorkshire RHA. Those boundaries do not reflect many other parts of public life such as the provision of water services, electricity and other energy supplies. As we discovered in a recent debate, there are media boundaries. Cumbria is covered by BBC North.

Mr. Hutton: Not true.

Mr. Greenway: It is true.

Mr. Hutton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Greenway: No. I am not giving way. We want to make progress. Again, one has checked this out.
The Government have made no attempt to discover local preference. How does anyone know where Cumbria would prefer to be in the proposed electoral regions? No one was asked. What if the Government, decide to change the regional boundaries? How many people, even in Cumbria, know what is happening? As I have said, there has been no consultation. That is a major deficiency in the Bill.
I presume that the Minister will speak to Government amendments Nos. 30 to 32. The amendments reflect some drafting deficiencies. I suspect that the problems with Sussex and Telford and The Wrekin are understandable, but it is rather surprising to find that the Home Secretary's local authority boundary—Blackburn with Darwen—is shown in the Bill as Blackburn. The right hon. Gentleman appears not to know the name of his local authority, or perhaps his departmental officials did not know.
There are serious shortcomings in the Bill, which we have sought to address by tabling amendments. There has been no consultation on boundaries and the boundary commission has not been involved. There is no provision for review and—

Mr. David Heath: I am intrigued. I have listened carefully and I yield to no one in my ignorance of the north-west. However, to what degree has the hon. Gentleman consulted the people of


Cumbria before prescribing a different system from that which he prescribed when in government for the regional offices?

Mr. Greenway: The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. There has been no consultation by anyone. The hon. Gentleman says that the Opposition should have consulted, but right hon. and hon. Members on the Labour Benches are the Government. There should have been a boundary commission review. There is not even any provision for such a review after the first elections take place next year. Nothing in the Bill provides a mechanism for change. For that reason, we believe that it is correct—

Mr. Richard Burden: The hon. Gentleman has told us why he believes that the regions that have been chosen may be inappropriate. Does he accept that, for the purposes of European parliamentary elections—as far as I am aware, those elections are what the Bill is about—it could be relevant to match those boundaries with the regions that are responsible for the distribution of European funds?

Mr. Greenway: The hon. Gentleman has anticipated me. The Government have imposed regions upon us but have failed to give the Committee proper justification for the regional electoral boundaries that are set out in the schedule and elsewhere. Furthermore, the Minister of State, Home Office did not give a satisfactory answer when the Committee discussed those matters previously.
The Under-Secretary has a new opportunity to offer the Committee a more convincing explanation. In particular, we invite the hon. Gentleman to tell the Committee why he thinks that North and North East Lincolnshire should be part of Yorkshire and why Cumbria should be in the North West region and not in the North East. As far as we are aware, there has been no consultation with voters in those areas. I cannot recall any previous occasion when such electoral boundaries were imposed by Government diktat without proper public consultation.

Mr. Hutton: I wish to correct the misapprehension under which the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) is clearly labouring, about Cumbria and its position in the United Kingdom. It is not true, as I tried to tell him, that Cumbria is regulated by the Northern and Yorkshire regional health authority. Neither is it true that only a "tiny part" of Cumbria, to use the hon. Gentleman's words, is outside the Northern and Yorkshire RHA. Instead, we are talking about two parliamentary constituencies. As the hon. Gentleman will know, representing as he does one of the largest constituencies in the United Kingdom, those two constituencies cannot be described as representing a tiny geographical area.
Neither is it true that Cumbria is part of the northern region in terms of its utilities. My constituency and the constituency of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) receive water from North West Water, and we receive electricity from the North Western electricity board, both of which are north-west-based utility companies. It is clear that the hon. Member for Ryedale has not done his homework satisfactorily. That undermines some of his arguments.
The hon. Gentleman's amendments are misguided and inappropriate for Cumbria, for two principal reasons. The hon. Gentleman implied that it is the Conservative view

that Cumbria should be part of the North East. That assumes that there is a consensus in Cumbria about which region we should be in, whether the North West or the North East. There is no such consensus in Cumbria, and certainly not in my constituency. I suspect that that is the position in some of the constituencies of the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends in Cumbria, whose support for the amendments has been noticeably absent.
The hon. Gentleman has done something of a disservice to his argument in criticising the Government for lack of consultation when the Conservative party has undertaken no such consultation of its own. The Opposition, without any consultation, propose that a county should be moved from one region to another. That is superficial and unhelpful.
For another reason, the amendments are mistaken. They are divisive and they rake over previous ground when no useful purpose can be served by so doing.
A decision must be taken. As I have said, my remarks are directed to Cumbria and not other parts of the United Kingdom. It is clear that the Government had to take a decision on the region to which Cumbria should belong. It is worth saying, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Burden), that, when it comes to European issues and the Government office of the north west—of which, under the Conservative Government, Cumbria formed a part, it being part of that office's remit—Cumbria is part of the north-west as a whole. Notwithstanding the sensitivities of other areas of Cumbria, there is a strong rational case for Cumbria to be in the North West region.
The amendments are unhelpful and do not serve a useful purpose. They rake over ground where a decision has had to be taken. Worse than that, they distract attention in Cumbria, and in the north-west as a whole, from the future. There is no doubt—look at how regional development agencies and the European Union are evolving—that the best way for Cumbria to have an effective voice in Europe, Parliament and elsewhere is for Cumbrian MEPs to be part of the North West region. That is my view. It is also the strong view of my constituents. If the amendments are pressed to a vote, I look forward to voting against them.

Mr. Christopher Gill: My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) said that there was confusion in the Government's mind when they drafted schedule 1, and referred to Government amendment. No. 32, which proposes to change the name of the county of The Wrekin to Telford and The Wrekin.
Before the Committee is invited to vote on the amendments, will the Minister say exactly what the Government have in mind for the county, because what is proposed is confusing? The original proposal to refer to The Wrekin as a county under the electoral arrangements was intelligible in the sense that The Wrekin district council will, on 1 April, become a unitary authority. However, the situation is further confused. If the Minister proposes to call the new county Telford and The Wrekin, he must bear it in mind that the name "The Wrekin" also applies to a Westminster parliamentary constituency. Notwithstanding the fact that The Wrekin district council becomes a unitary authority on 1 April, the parliamentary constituency of The Wrekin will remain part of the administrative area of the county of Shropshire. One


would have thought that the original terminology was probably correct. The proposed amendment will simply add to the confusion.
The people of Shropshire who live in the parliamentary constituency of The Wrekin believe that they are, for administrative purposes, in the county of Shropshire. If the amendment is passed, the people living in the parliamentary constituency of The Wrekin will be very confused indeed.
Can the Minister clarify exactly what was in his mind when he proposed the amendment?

Mr. Damian Green: I have followed the debate with particular interest, and some care. I am not surprised that hon. Members disagree severely about the relative proportionality of d'Hondt and Sainte-Lague, about modifying Sainte-Lague and so on. I am fascinated to discover that the Committee can disagree over which television stations people in Cumbria watch, and which health authorities cover which areas. The regional boundaries that the Government are trying to draw—for electoral purposes in particular, and therefore for purposes of identification—are inevitably artificial.
The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton) said that decisions have to be made. If the best that can be said is, "You have to define a boundary, so you have to take a decision," that tells us that the definitions in the Government's amendments are artificial, open to controversy and therefore open to improvement, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway).

Mr. Eric Martlew: I am confused about the Conservatives' position on Cumbria. The two Conservative MPs for Cumbria support the North West. My own feeling is that the Conservative party's amendment has been moved for political gain. The Conservatives believe that they will gain seats by putting Cumbria in the North East.

Mr. Green: I should not wish to comment on the motives of my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) in moving the amendment, except to say that they would have been for the best. If the hon. Gentleman disagrees with his hon. Friends on the Government Benches, that merely illustrates my point that the Government are confused. They are not sure where all parts of Cumbria properly belong. Any division that they try to draw is inherently artificial. Therefore, the regions have no validity.
The amendments illustrate a wider point. If the Government are seeking to introduce a proportional system for the elections and are getting into such trouble in defining the regions—not just their size but the boundaries—I am not sure why they did not start with a national list system. If they want a fully proportional system, that is available through national lists. The Government destroyed the constituency link anyway, so they may as well have a national list. The Government could have avoided the problems that they have caused themselves through those inadequate boundaries. Indeed, it would be easier to preserve proportionality, if the

Government regard that as all-important, with a national rather than a regional list. I should welcome the Minister's comments on why the Government did not accept the logic of their own position. Although Opposition Members would not accept it, perhaps the Government should have done so.
Of all the points raised so far, possibly the weakest is that the Government's lack of consultation in creating regional boundaries is justified because the Opposition did not consult before tabling the amendments. Apart from the naivety of suggesting that, with the full resources available to the Government, which allow them to consult, there is an equivalent responsibility on the Opposition parties, we oppose the Bill. It is not our responsibility to make it perfect. We are trying, through the amendments, to make it slightly better than it is, but to suggest that every Opposition party should run its own consultation exercise on a bad Bill introduced by the Government is simply absurd. I hope that the Minister will not try to support that line of argument.
We also heard the argument that the regions are sensible because they broadly coincide with the regions covered by the Government offices, and that that will help MEPs to act on behalf of their constituents. That would be a logical argument had the Government preserved the constituency link. The idea that MEPs representing a wide region will act en bloc, across party, is absurd. In the South East, for example, much of the competition for European funds will be inside the region. They will not be looking only for money to go to a particular region. Distribution within the region will be equally important.

Mr. Syms: The Government have already crossed the regional boundaries, because the North West region covers Merseyside and the North West. They have already accepted the argument and are not keeping strictly to the regional boundaries.

Mr. Green: My hon. Friend is completely right. It is merely one more illustration of the fact that, even under the Government's terms, the Bill is defective.
I am simply attempting to address the points, which seem rather weak, made by hon. Members on the Government Benches. In practical terms, MEPs in the various regions will have to compete with each other if they have a constituency to represent, but they will not have a constituency. It will not be like existing MEPs, who, to some extent, try to replicate the job that we in the House do—represent the people of a particular area. The job of an MEP would be different if the constituency link were broken, so it is invalid to argue that electoral regions should coincide with regions covered by Government offices.
The Government's proposed system is deeply flawed. The amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale would improve the system slightly, but would not make it acceptable and democratic, and would not improve the job or the job description of MEPs. Nevertheless, I support them, because they would ameliorate some of schedule's worst effects.

Mr. Allan: The hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) said that confusion would be reduced if the lump of Humberside that lies south of the River Humber were taken out of the Yorkshire and The Humber


region and put into another. Although Humberside was unpopular as a local government unit, it was recognised as an economic unit by the previous Government, who created the region of Yorkshire and Humberside. The hon. Gentleman's proposition does not make sense: taking a lump out of a region covered by a Government office would enhance confusion, not reduce it.
I would lend support, however, to the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that there should be an independent review after the election, and hope that one will take place. Issues that arise during the election should be considered subsequently by an independent body, such as the boundary commission, but we are up against a deadline. The boundaries of the Government offices for the regions make most sense. Under the Bill, the North West and Merseyside regions have been merged—lumps were not taken out of one and put elsewhere, which would have caused a problem.
Comments were made about the fact that MEPs currently work en bloc, and it was suggested that they might work against each other. That would be disastrous, and we want the regions to be integral precisely to avoid that problem. We do not want half a dozen MEPs going off in different directions and losing European funds in the process: MEPs and their regional development agencies must speak with one voice to secure funds for the region.

Mr. Gill: People living in Gibraltar will be disappointed that my two amendments have not been selected for debate. They will think that the Minister has been leaned on by Foreign Office Ministers to ensure that the 18,000 people living there are not enfranchised for European Parliament elections.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. I would not want the Minister to make any mention of which amendments have and have not been selected for debate.

Mr. George Howarth: I accept your ruling, Mr. Martin. The hon. Gentleman will have to find other ways in which to raise that matter, which has already been discussed.
The hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) let the cat out of the bag. Conservative Members have learnt nothing, and the public think that they are completely out of touch. It is no good the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) waving his hands in the air. It was silly of the hon. Gentleman to say that MEPs from the same region may not co-operate. In the House and in the European Parliament, Members of all parties co-operate for the good of their constituents. I hope that he did not mean what he said, and that he accepts that after the next election, MEPs, whatever party they represent and whatever list they have been on, will automatically work for the good of their communities, as we all do.

Mr. Green: My point was that the Government are breaking the constituency link. MPs work together

because we have constituency interests, but breaking the constituency link will change that for the European Parliament.

Mr. Howarth: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has corrected the impression that he gave.

Mr. Gill: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Howarth: I shall give way when I have finished my point. The hon. Member for Ashford, perhaps inadvertently, created the clear impression that he did not expect MEPs from the same region to co-operate. If he is saying that he did not mean that, I accept it.

Mr. Gill: rose—

Mrs. Theresa May: rose—

Miss Anne McIntosh: rose—

Mr. Howarth: I am inundated with requests, but I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman first, because he was the first to ask.

Mr. Gill: The Minister said that MEPs will work hard for their constituents, as Westminster MPs do, but he has no grounds for saying that. What evidence has he that that will be the case, given that the close link between MEP and constituency will no longer exist? I invite the Minister to answer a question that has not been dealt with: how will the electorate get rid of an MEP whom they consider to be unsatisfactory? That has been within their gift, because they could organise constituency affairs to get rid of an MEP, which they will not be able to do under the list system.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to go wide of the amendments. The question how to get rid of an elected representative has nothing to do with the group of amendments before the Committee.

Mr. Howarth: I am not clear what point the hon. Gentleman was trying to make that has not already been debated.
The hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand that we are proposing a regional list system. We are not saying that such a system is the same as a constituency system. It will become more apparent as time goes on that Europe operates at a regional level, and that we should not pretend that cobbling together seven, eight or nine parliamentary constituencies will give an MEP a constituency that makes sense. The truth is that it is currently impossible for MEPs to represent the interests of individual constituents in the same way as Members of this House when their constituencies contain 500,000 people.

Miss McIntosh: I am concerned by the inferences that have been drawn from comments made to the Minister by my hon. Friends. Conservative Members are concerned that breaking the constituency link will have consequences for how future MEPs will behave. People who have been elected to Parliament or to the European


Parliament, in which I have the honour to serve, have a code of conduct and etiquette. Representatives from other member states who are on the same side and of the same nationality have no constituency link and no code of behaviour. How will future MEPs work together without treading on each other's toes, and how will they behave towards the media and their own party?

Mr. Howarth: The hon. Lady has direct experience of these matters, but I do not believe that we are letting loose on the country a horde of MEPs who are about to tear each other limb from limb. Whether they are elected from a list or as an independent, and whichever party they represent, those people will co-operate sensibly. I do not share the hon. Lady's gloom.

Mrs. May: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Howarth: Yes, but then I should make progress.

The First Deputy Chairman: Before the hon. Lady intervenes, I remind hon. Members that we are debating electoral regions. The amendments propose taking part of those regions out of the equation. Therefore, we would be going far too wide if we were to discuss the conduct of elected MEPs after the European elections.

Mrs. May: I am grateful for your advice, Mr. Martin, and I shall endeavour to keep within the rules that you have just set out. Does the Minister accept that some of the electoral regions that will be created under the Bill are so large that there will be distinct differences within them? The South East, which will be represented by 11 MEPs, includes my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green). It is clear from the Government office for the south east that the region is so large that it will be difficult to represent every interest. For example, Kent and the Thames valley have different interests and Thames valley councils are increasingly working together rather than as part of the south-east. Does the Minister accept that that problem may arise?

Mr. Howarth: I shall return to that point, which was raised in a different way by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan).
It has already been explained to the Committee how the electoral regions provided for in the Bill came about. As has already been conceded, they are the regions that are served by the Government offices for the regions, with the single exception of Merseyside, which includes my constituency. Merseyside is too small to be a region on its own, so it has been combined with the North West. Some hon. Members may be aware of the origins of the exception for Merseyside, which would take too long to explain now.
When the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) was Secretary of State, he created a particular way in which to deal with the problems that existed in Merseyside at the time. The Government office for Merseyside developed from that. The regional development agencies that will be created by the Regional

Development Agencies Bill, which has just completed its consideration in Committee, will have exactly the same regional boundaries. Many of the European issues will be dealt with by regional development agencies and there is a clear cross-interest in respect of matters concerning MEPs and regional development agencies.
We deliberately selected regions that were well known and well established so that there could be no suggestion that electoral boundaries were being manipulated for party advantage. Let me say to the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway), who skirted around the issue, that it was not appropriate for the boundary commission to decide the boundaries because they were already well established. The boundary commission has great expertise and does a very good job in trying to average out the size of constituencies, while reflecting the interests of different communities within constituencies. However, that is not an appropriate skill in these circumstances as we are dealing with a regional system.
The boundaries were established by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) and confirmed by the Conservative Government in 1993. Conservative Members now allude to one or two anomalies that should be put right, particularly in Cumbria, Yorkshire and Humberside, but a great deal must have happened since 1993 for them to say that the entire system should be changed. I am confident that Cumbria will be well served as part of the North West electoral region.

Mr. Martlew: It should also be considered that Cumbria has never had its own MEP. It was always represented by the MEP for Cumbria and Lancashire, North, so there is probably some logic in my hon. Friend's argument. However, I would find it offensive if the same argument were used in respect of regional government as there is less enthusiasm for being part of the North West in the northern part of the county than in the southern part. In respect of Europe, we have always been connected to the north-west, but in respect of regional government and unitary authorities, the logical approach would be to include the north of the county in the north-east and the south of the county in the north-west.

Mr. Howarth: I can assure my hon. Friend that at this stage, I am not addressing what might happen in any future system of regional government. I recognise his knowledge, but no decisions have been made.
In respect of Cumbria, the argument put by the hon. Member for Ryedale was completely demolished by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), who showed through his knowledge of his own part of the county the appropriateness of what is proposed rather than the Opposition's amendments. Similarly, I believe that people who live in North and North-East Lincolnshire will be well served as part of Yorkshire and The Humber. Although the county of Humberside no longer exists, over the years, and helped by the existence of the Humber bridge, close ties—both economic and otherwise—have been built up across the river. The experience of the Government offices for the regions has shown that Cumbria sits well in the North West region, while the region of Yorkshire and The Humber is well established.
The Opposition have argued that rural interests will not be represented properly in areas with large urban concentrations. In a proportional electoral system such as


we are proposing in the Bill, all votes count. Targeting is no longer an appropriate campaign strategy. It is, therefore, in the interests of all parties, in order to maximise their vote across a region, to ensure that they achieve a geographical balance in the composition of their lists so that all parts of a region are equally represented. Similarly, once elected, MEPs simply cannot afford to neglect any part of their electorate.

Mr. Gill: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Howarth: No. The hon. Gentleman has spoken several times in the debate and I have already given way to him.
I have said that the regions in the Bill—including the North West, which encompasses Cumbria, and Yorkshire and The Humber—are the standard administrative regions used by the European Union for all manner of purposes. It therefore makes good sense to use the same regions for electing MEPs.
A number of hon. Members asked whether, at some point in future, it might be appropriate to reconsider the boundaries. That option is always open to Parliament, and if Parliament wished to do so after the application of the new procedures, it would not be out of the question. However, it would have to be on the basis that there was something wrong with the existing regions, and I do not believe that to be the case. There is no good case for departing from well-established existing boundaries, as Opposition Members accepted as recently as five years ago.
Finally, the three Government amendments are simple drafting amendments which make no substantive alteration to the Bill.
In answer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), a number of newly created local authority areas have adopted new names. Perhaps I should point out, as the hon. Gentleman may not be aware of it, that The Wrekin has decided to change its name to Telford and The Wrekin, and for that reason, we have tabled an amendment to the schedule. We are merely reflecting a decision that has been made locally. We have consistently used in the Bill the names that are used or are about to be used in the local authority areas.

Mrs. May: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Howarth: I will give way briefly, but I want to make progress.

Mrs. May: I am grateful to the Minister; I have a very brief point. I hope that he will not forget the question that I asked earlier. I have been listening hard and I do not think that he has responded. Does he accept that large regions, such as the South East, will have diverse interests in their different parts? That may be a problem for Members of the European Parliament trying to represent the whole region.

Mr. Howarth: I have covered that point in two ways. First, it is possible for elected representatives to represent the diverse interests of a region. Our constituencies show that. There is a substantial rural part of my constituency as well as a highly urban area. Secondly, it is open to Parliament to revisit the issue, although I do not think that that will be necessary for some time.
I am sure that the Committee will have no difficulty in accepting Government amendments Nos. 30, 31 and 32. I do not intend to detain us any further on that. I urge the Committee to reject amendments Nos. 59 to 67.

Mr. Greenway: I assure the Committee that we had no intention of being divisive when tabling our amendments. The purpose was to question and test the evidence of popular support for the regional boundaries and their appropriateness. The debate has shown that they are artificial and that at the margins there is no consensus.

Mr. Hutton: The Conservatives imposed them.

Mr. Greenway: Yes, but we did so for a different reason from that in the Bill. The hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) put his finger on the issue. There is a lack of consensus in various sub-regions about which region they belong to. If the Government accept the regional boundaries that we proposed for a wholly different reason—the setting up of regional offices—and say that they are cast in tablets of stone, not just for European elections, but for regional development agencies and, eventually, regional government, without the opportunity for a proper review, we shall continue to oppose them. Proper consultation is needed.
Given that the hour is pressing, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments made: No. 30, in page 6, line 35 after 'Blackburn' insert 'with Darwen'.

No. 31, in page 7, line 21, leave out 'West'.

No. 32, in page 7, line 36, leave out 'The' and insert 'Telford and'.—[Mr. George Howarth.]

Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.

Schedule 2

MINOR AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS OF SCHEDULE 1 TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS ACT 1978

Amendment proposed: No. 33, in page 8, line 15, leave out 'candidates' and parties".—[Mr. George Howarth.]

The First Deputy Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 25, in page 8, line 15, leave out 'and parties".
Government amendment No. 34.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I had assumed that the Minister would speak to the amendment. It would be helpful if we could start by hearing the Government's rationale for the amendment. I should be happy to respond to that.

The First Deputy Chairman: So that everyone knows that the Chairman is acting properly, I should explain that anyone is entitled to move an amendment formally.


That is up to them. I have called the right hon. Gentleman. He can make his case if he wants to. It is up to him.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: If the Government are moving the amendment formally, this is the most disgraceful part of the debate.

Mr. George Howarth: I shall reply.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: It would be more helpful if the Minister made his speech now.

Mr. Howarth: I took it from the remarks of the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) a few minutes ago that he wanted to make progress and that we could move forward. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to debate the amendment, that is fine. I had assumed that the Conservatives wanted to make progress.
The right hon. Gentleman was kind enough to give notice of his intention to speak on the amendment. Government amendments Nos. 33 and 34 are intended to clarify the original intention of the paragraph, which was to give the power to make regulations to extend the imposition of a limit on parties' national expenditure on European elections.
The European Court of Human Rights gave a judgment recently on a complaint by Mrs. Phyllis Bowman that legislation covering expenditure by third parties at elections infringes the right to freedom of speech under the European convention on human rights. The court found that section 75 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 restricted Mrs. Bowman's freedom of speech and was therefore in breach of article 10 of the convention.
The Government are considering the implications of the judgment carefully. It is a difficult area of electoral practice. We have asked the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Lord Neill of Blaydon, to look at that aspect of election funding in its wider review of party funding. We shall wait for the committee's view before taking any action on the judgment. In the meantime, the existing provisions of law continue to apply.
The amendments relate to the power to make regulations about the limitation of candidates' and parties' election expenses. Under the regional list system proposed in the Bill, the existing limitations on candidates' expenditure in constituencies cannot apply meaningfully. The electorate are being asked to vote for parties rather than an individual candidate, except in the case of independent candidates. We need to consider whether there should be limitations on expenditure and, if so, how they should be handled. It may be necessary to limit the expenditure by candidates and that by parties. Amendment No. 25 would restrict the regulation-making power to limit expenditure by candidates only. In the context of a regional list system, the limitation of candidates' expenditure alone is insufficient. I therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman not to press his amendment.
The Neill committee might recommend national limits on expenditure by political parties. If so, the House will have to consider that recommendation. In those circumstances, the regulations could be used to implement that proposal in relation to European elections.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I am grateful to the Minister; that helps to start the debate.
It is a matter of record that, in the time that I have had this job and although, occasionally, the temperature across the Dispatch Box has risen ever so slightly, I have never been personal in my comments. I mean no disrespect to the Minister, but we find ourselves in the most serious situation and it is quite unacceptable that the Home Secretary is not speaking on this group of amendments. The Minister read his brief, but the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves might not be as apparent to some as he and I know it to be.
Not only did I write to the Home Secretary when the European Court of Human Rights decision was announced two weeks ago; I pointed out in Committee last week that we would be looking for a preliminary response from the Government. We are doing so not because we are seeking, in two weeks, to pin the Government to some definitive response to the judgment—I think that I know enough about it to share the Minister's view that the Government find themselves in a complicated and difficult situation—but because whatever decision emerges is highly relevant to the Bill, particularly the Government amendments. We tabled our amendment, in part, as a probing amendment to find out exactly what the Government intend. I shall talk generally about the Government amendments rather than specifically seek to defend ours.
When the Minister speaks again—if he catches your eye, Mr. Martin—I should be grateful if he will explain the phrase "a general election" in Government amendment No. 34. Those words have a particular connotation in this House and this country. I do not find them defined in the Bill in any way other than the conventional way yet, in the context of the Bill, we shall not be having a general election.

Mr. George Howarth: To clear up that point, "a general election" is a general European Parliament election.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: That is what I assumed the hon. Gentleman meant. I was—I think, helpfully—trying to point out that there is confusion about the phrase because it normally means something else in this country. Since the phrase is not defined in the Bill in the way in which the hon. Gentleman has just defined it, it would be helpful if he withdrew the amendment and, on Report, made clear what the words "a general election" mean in the context of the Bill.

Mr. Martin Linton: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the phrase "a general election" has always meant nothing more and nothing less than the


opposite of a by-election? Local or European elections can be general if they are not by-elections. The term does not define only Westminster elections.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: The Minister understands the point that I am making and the spirit in which I am making it. If the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) does not mind, I shall not get into a semantic discussion.

Mrs. May: Is my right hon. Friend concerned, as I am, about amendment No. 35, which was not selected for debate—

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Lady mentioned an amendment that has not been selected. She should not do that type of thing.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I shall not follow my hon. Friend down that road.
We have no sense from the Minister's speech that the Government have the first idea of what they will put in place for the funding of European elections at a constituency and candidate level. There was nothing in his speech that indicated whether there might be limits, or whether such limits would be on parties at a regional level or on individual candidates on the list. There was nothing in his speech that indicated whether there would be any relationship between the amount of money that a registered party—we do not know what that means—could spend in a region compared with what could be spent by an independent candidate in that region.
The Minister and his right hon. and hon. Friends have spent some time stressing the fact that the Bill breaks the link between MEPs and their constituencies. The list system will be run from the centre and, as we established last week, much more undemocratically in the Labour party than in the other two parties. We have heard nothing of how the Minister envisages controlling expenditure from the centre at a regional or individual level. This is the worst example of the Government approach: "Trust us; we will come back with the regulation. We will give you an hour and a half to debate it and, with our majority, we will push it through."
Unacceptable as all that is, it pales into insignificance beside the Bowman decision. It might be for the convenience of the Committee if I remind it exactly what that case is all about. In the 1992 general election, as my memory serves me, Mrs. Phyllis Bowman, a senior executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, had printed 25,000 leaflets setting out the views on abortion of the three main party candidates in the Halifax constituency. Given Mrs. Bowman's point of view—I shall be neutral and non-inflammatory—the record of the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) was less attractive than those of the other two candidates. The leaflets were not effective, since the hon. Lady was re-elected.
Mrs. Bowman was taken to court, found guilty and prosecuted, and eventually appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on the ground that her freedom of expression, as guaranteed in article 10 of the European convention on human rights, had been transgressed. Two weeks ago, the European Court found in Mrs. Bowman's favour. It ruled that her freedom of expression under article 10 had been transgressed and it would appear that

the part of our national law that stipulates that any individual cannot spend more than £5 promoting a person's candidacy in an election particularly upset the court.
The significance of the ruling should be understood. Expenditure on elections in our system—which was touched on earlier, not least in the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms)—is controlled by a legally enshrined agent. We have had a ceiling on constituency expenditure, which was possible because expenditure was funnelled down one channel. Individual expenditure up to a limit of £5 was thought to be de minimis and therefore not influential.
In effect, the decision of the European Court on Human Rights is that anyone can spend any amount of money in promoting or denigrating any candidate. That is open sesame—it destroys the basis on which we have funded elections in this country thus far.
During the Second Reading debate of the Human Rights Bill, the Government were generous in recognising that when the European Court of Human Rights had found against British law, Conservative Governments had always moved to change the law of the land. That generosity was appreciated and remarked upon at the time—indeed, it was true of previous Labour Governments also. We now find ourselves with a European Court decision, based on article 10—which is the subject of heated discussion in Committee on another major constitutional Bill—which says, in effect, that British law is no longer appropriate.
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I heard what the Minister said—in the meantime British law remains as it is. Technically, that is true, but in practice it is not. If the Minister were to spend his hard-earned money on promoting the candidacy of someone at the local elections in just eight weeks' time—or on denigrating an old Labour candidate—he knows that he would not be taken to court, even though he had, prima facie, broken the law of the land. He knows that the European Court would nod his appeal through because it has dealt with the Bowman case.
In practice, if not in theory, we have no law governing expenditure at a constituency or regional level. The Bill does not address that point. What is worse, the Minister says that the matter will be referred to the Neill committee, but that committee's deliberations on the capping of party expenditure will be irrelevant until the Government decide what they will do to close the loophole.
If, for example, the Neill committee said that, at a general election, no party should spend more than the Labour party spent centrally at the last general election—£26 million—that would be irrelevant; anybody could add their expenditure in any constituency in the country in support of or to denigrate any candidate. There is nothing the Neill committee or the House can achieve other than by primary legislation. I mention primary legislation because the amendments and the schedule deal with regulation. The Minister and I will agree that we cannot address the consequences of the European Court's judgment by regulation.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we cannot even


address the matter by primary legislation? Our primary legislation must conform to the ruling of the court. The ruling in the Bowman case is simple—anyone can spend anything at an election. No matter what we do—by legislation or regulation—it will be pointless.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: That is a good question, because it goes to the heart of what we are discussing. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is right. He might be right.

Mr. Syms: He is nodding.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Poole that I have been in the House with the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) for long enough to treat his legal judgments with great consideration. His batting record is reasonable by any lawyer's standards, but I am not sure that he is right because the judgment drew attention to the £5 limit.
For example, the Government might decide to change £5 to £1,000 and be willing to have that tested in the European Court. The consequences would blow a hole in our electoral system. If the hon. Gentleman and half a dozen of his friends decided to spend £1,000 each in the next-door constituency, that would have a profound effect on the election. They would, in effect, be spending virtually as much as the official expenditure channelled through the agent in the constituency.

Mr. Bermingham: The Bowman decision said that £5 was de minimis and ridiculous, but if one reads the judgment carefully, one sees that it goes further. In addition, it was a judgment of the full court, which makes it even more difficult to deal with. It says that a person is "entitled to spend"—it does not say that there should be a reasonable limit. That is why I advance the premise that we cannot alter the judgment, either by primary legislation or by regulation.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I have acknowledged that the hon. Gentleman might be right. I find it encouraging that we agree on the fundamental nature of the decision and on the coach and horses to be driven through our electoral law.
We are being asked to agree to two Government amendments that we do not find attractive. The Government want to come back to the matter later. The amendments are a cover because the Government have no idea what they should do and no idea of what the limits should be. They have no idea whether list candidates should spend money and, if so, how much. The Government have no idea what system to have in the first place, and they will not decide until Monday. They do not know how to deal with the issue of expenses. The Government are saying that we should touch the forelock and trust the Home Secretary and that that will be sufficient. It will not be sufficient. That is an unacceptable way to proceed in a constitutional Bill and it is made worse by the Bowman decision.
So that no one is in any doubt, the decision means that any vested interest group can target candidates—Labour and Conservative regional list candidates, Members

of Parliament and local councillors. Any Member of Parliament who is on the wrong side of a vested interest group—perhaps for the best of reasons, and even if those reasons are supported by 99 per cent. of the constituents he has been elected to serve—can, because of the Bowman decision, be targeted financially. We saw what a rich man tried to do at the last election. A very rich man can decide to spend an awful lot of money in targeted seats to affect the outcome of the democratic process. A trade union might decide to target Tory Members of Parliament, if history is anything to go by.
The Government amendments have not begun to address the problem. They do not know what they are talking about. I felt sorry for the Minister when he was reading his brief because he knows that nobody sitting in the Box can come to his aid with any substantive information on the amendments. They are all quality civil servants, but they do not have a clue—because Ministers do not have a clue.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The right hon. Gentleman knows that the Minister is responsible for his brief.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I understand that, Mr. Martin. I was trying to pay a compliment, but I recognise that no one but hon. Members exists and so I shall talk only about the Minister. He does not know and I do not blame him—well, I do in one sense because before bringing this constitutional measure to the Committee he should at least have had some understanding of how the elections were to be financed, but he does not. He has no idea as to the division between the candidate, the regional list and the centre. In this case, it is not his fault, but the whole subject has been blown wide open by the European Court decision.

Mr. A. J. Beith: The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the difficulties that the Bowman judgment presents for our electoral law and the possibility of candidates being targeted by various different causes, but I hope that he recognises and will make it clear that the amendments clarify provisions that would enable a national limit to be set, thus preventing parties buying elections with substantial national expenditure. Does he accept the principle that there should be a national limit?

Sir Brian Mawhinney: The right hon. Gentleman does not understand the Bowman decision. There is no such thing as a cap on national spending any more, whatever the Neill committee, the Government or this Committee might decide. For example, the Neill committee might say that the Government won the last election by spending £26 million nationally, so that will be the limit—that would scare the daylights out of the right hon. Gentleman's party—but it will be the limit only as regards a party's expenditure. There is no legal means of stopping anyone else in this Chamber spending more money on their own behalf to target the right hon. Gentleman or someone standing against him. He has not understood the significance of the Bowman decision.
We find ourselves faced with the most serious problem without the presence of the Home Secretary, or any response, despite the fact that we showed the courtesy of alerting the Home Office to the fact that we needed to have this debate. As I told the Minister, I am looking not for a definitive decision, but for some indication of how we might proceed. The hon. Gentleman and the Home Secretary might think that it would be worth consulting the other parties on this issue. I have always said that I am happy to meet the Home Secretary in those circumstances.
We will meet next week on Report. If the hon. Gentleman accepts my advice about amendment No. 34, which could be more felicitously amended, he could bring it back so amended to the House then and give us some early indication of the Government's thinking on this important issue.

Mr. George Howarth: The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney), gave notice that he wanted to raise this issue. I would not want to minimise his concern, but, although he acknowledged one central fact in my earlier speech, he has not taken it fully into account.
Whatever else is happening as a result of the Bowman case—I shall refer to that in detail in a moment—in the meantime, the existing provisions of the law, section 75 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, continue to apply irrespective of whether we might need at some point to make regulations. So, unless and until it becomes apparent that regulations are necessary, that will be the case. It is not that there is nothing in existence—the existing provisions of electoral law are in place.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I said that, although the Minister was technically right to point out that that was the law of the land, in practice—I think I used the hon. Gentleman as an example—if he were to spend his money, illegally in terms of that legislation, the Committee knows that nothing would now happen to him. In practice, we have no limits, even though there is a law on the statute book and that is why the matter is of such urgency.

Mr. Howarth: The right hon. Gentleman is correct, and I am not trying to pretend that the Bowman judgment does not present difficulties: it does, and I shall describe what we are going to do about it. We are considering the implications of the judgment as it affects the areas of electoral practice that he mentioned.
In addition, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Lord Neill, has been asked to study that aspect of election funding within the wider review of party funding that that committee has agreed to undertake. The important thing is that that review is under way. Obviously, the Bowman judgment needs to be fed into the process. No one could sensibly argue that that should not be the case. If an inquiry into party funding is under way, which has implications for election expenditure, it is sensible that the judgment and its implications should be fed into the process.
At the same time, we are taking advice on the implications, so I do not see that there is that urgency. In amendments Nos. 33 and 34, we are merely being prudent. I am not saying that we know for certain at this stage whether we will need to introduce regulations. Only when we have finished considering the matter in more detail and Lord Neill has had the opportunity to look into it, can we be certain about that.
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In those circumstances, it is prudent to put into the Bill a provision that would enable us to produce regulations. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire was kind enough to say that he did not think that we were involved in any conspiracy, and his arguments were reasonable. As he acknowledged, if we introduced regulations, they would have to be debated. It would be done not by the diktat of the Home Secretary or anyone else; it would be a matter for debate in the House.
If, as is often the case, consultation between the parties was necessary before the introduction of any regulations, I am sure that it would take place. The previous Government undertook such consultations, as did previous Labour Governments, and I would expect this Government to do so. The right hon. Gentleman says that the consultations should take place before the Bill comes back to the House on Report. I will pass that view on to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, but I think that, although a time will come when consultation will need to take place, it will not be before the Report stage.
The prudent move, which the amendments allow, is that we should have the scope to lay regulations if those should prove necessary as a result of the Neill committee and the advice that we will receive on the Bowman judgment. In the meantime, I am confident that the existing legal provisions apply.

Mr. Bermingham: Will the Minister also suggest to his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that Bowman is looked into carefully? Its scope may well need to be tested before the European Court before any regulations are laid that could make any sense and if Lord Justice Neill's inquiry is to have any meaning in the long term.

Mr. Howarth: I can assure my hon. Friend that the Bowman judgment is already being considered carefully. He makes an important point, but it has been covered.
In view of those matters, it is important that the ability to make those regulations should be within the scope of the Bill. Amendments Nos. 33 and 34 would help us with that.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: Perhaps the Minister could have amendment No. 34 redrafted to make it clear what the words "a general election" mean.

Mr. Howarth: That is a fair point. As I said, in this context, they mean a European election. The term "general election" has usually meant any election that is not a by-election, as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) pointed out. So the term applies to a general election for this Parliament and a general election for the European Parliament. Therefore, I do not think that it is necessary to clarify the amendment any further. That is an accepted principle, and that is why the amendment has been phrased in that way. With those comments, I hope that the Committee will support amendments Nos. 33 and 34 and that, if the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire thinks it appropriate, he will not press amendment No. 25.

Mr. Allan: The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) gave an apocalyptic view of the Bowman judgment. The judgment is


significant, but we do not yet know whether it will be apocalyptic. It recognised the need to hold free elections—obviously, allowing a wealthy individual to buy a seat would contravene the principle of free elections.
The court considered whether the restrictions in the law that applied to Mrs. Bowman were proportionate to the effect that they produced. It made it clear that she was not promoting a specific candidate, but publishing information about all candidates. It also said that people who were pro-abortion might choose to vote, with the anti-abortionists, for the candidates she tried to highlight.

Mr. Bermingham: If the hon. Gentleman reads further, he will see that the judgment makes it clear that adverse or knocking copy can be electorally effective. We run the risk of going down the American road of black and negative advertising against both person and party.

Mr. Allan: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. My point is that the courts will have further work to do in testing whether the Bowman judgment will cover a case in which, for example, the Minister—who is clearly a member of a party—spends significant sums promoting himself. I do not believe that we have yet reached such an apocalyptic position, although we have yet to hear the results of the Government's deliberations.
Another critical point is that the court, in justifying its judgment in the Bowman case, specifically referred to the fact that there were no restrictions on national or regional expenditure. Liberal Democrats are happy to support the Government amendments, as they would allow for regulations to limit national expenditure. We believe that such a limit has been a long time coming, and that it should be applied to all elections.
The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire did not refer to amendment No. 25, which he tabled. We believe that it would prevent the imposition of national limits, which is a disgraceful proposition, given the strong public support for them. Many people will ask why the Conservatives, with their record of dubious finance and heavy election spending, did not want parties' expenditure to be limited nationally.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: If the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) had been listening—I am grateful to the Minister, who seems to indicate his support before I have even made my point—he would have heard that I explained precisely what amendment No. 25 would do. As to his point about Bowman, those of us who have been in the House for some time have come to realise that it takes the Liberal Democrats a little longer to understand what is fairly obvious to the rest of us. His short speech underlined that point.
The Minister said that the Bowman case had been referred to Lord Neill, but the matter is not quasi-political—it does not require a cross-party decision on what would be an acceptable political framework. It is a fundamental legal question. I share the view of the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham). We find it difficult to envisage what the Government expect will emerge from the Neill committee on this issue.
Indeed, as I said, the consequence of Bowman is, in effect, to render null and void what emerges from the Neill committee's deliberations, unless and until the

Government decide how to amend the law to bring it into line with the court judgment—that has always been the bipartisan tradition in this country. The Neill committee will then have the opportunity to decide what advice it should offer within that new legal framework. I do not expect the Minister to go into the matter now, but I want him to think about it and reflect to the Home Secretary hon. Members' sense of unease about the Government's response.
The Minister also said that there was no great need for urgency. I know that this is not the subject of the debate, so I shall not go into detail, but elections will take place throughout the country on 7 May, and it will be supposed that they will be subject to current law. We have established that that may be true in theory, but no longer necessarily in practice. I would have expected the Minister to think that that merited some urgency.
Again, I agree with the hon. Member for St. Helens, South—I hope that I am not ruining his reputation by agreeing with him so often—who made an important point. The scope and nature of the decision may have to be tested in the courts before hon. Members can form a view about what our response should be in terms of primary legislation. That will take time, and it will impinge on the European elections. Given the speed with which the European Court moves, it might even impinge on the next general election.
I assume that hon. Members will shortly consider in Committee the Human Rights Bill, at the heart of which this matter lies. Before we do that, it would help if the Government could give us some steer on the interrelationship between Bowman and the Human Rights Bill, as well as between Bowman and the European Parliamentary Elections Bill.
Given that I have explained why we tabled amendment No. 25—the Minister heard and understood what I said, even if the Liberal Democrats did not—I am perfectly happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. We are discussing amendment No. 33, which is a Government amendment.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: In that case, to be technical, if and when we come to amendment No. 25, we shall not press it further.

Mr. Linton: The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) said that amendment No. 25 was a probing amendment on the Bowman judgment. I think that we would all agree that it was necessary, as the judgment is currently the all-important issue in this area. Like him, I look forward to hearing the Government's response. I am not convinced that the right hon. Gentleman has identified what the final consequences will be. The £5 limit, for example, was an individual limit—it is not absolutely clear that, even if there were national limits, it would apply to third-party organisations.
My substantive point is that amendment No. 25 is not only a probing amendment—it would defend the status quo and an anomaly in law that allows the Conservative party to outspend every other party that is represented in the House. The "open sesame" to which the right hon. Gentleman referred already exists. Indeed, one could


argue that it began more than 100 years ago, when legislation aimed at preventing corrupt and illegal practices in elections referred only to candidates, not to political parties.
Moreover, in the 1950s, a court decided that anyone could publicise political propaganda during an election provided that it did not refer to a particular candidate in a particular constituency. That judgment meant that a poster saying "Vote Conservative" did not count in terms of the limits, whereas one saying "Vote Bloggs, Conservative" did. That anomaly has allowed the Conservative party to spend without limit at every election since then.
The Liberal Democrats' record is not spotless, as in 1974 the Liberal party, as it was then, was the first to advertise in a newspaper during an election campaign, opening the anomaly even wider. Liberals have regretted setting that precedent ever since. I hope that they will support us in reversing the situation.
Under the status quo, which the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire wants to defend through amendment No. 25, we have the ridiculous situation in which spending on local campaigns, which are no more than a sideshow these days, is limited, but national spending is not.

Mr. Tim Collins: The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting case for a limit on political parties being able to advertise in newspapers but not, presumably, for a limit on the amount that newspapers themselves can spend advancing a political cause. Is that perhaps because of Mr. Rupert Murdoch's shift of view during the general election campaign?

Mr. Linton: That does not figure at all in the Government's thinking or in mine.
At the general election, Conservative candidates spent £5 million, as they were limited by law, but the party itself spent £20 million, because there was no limit on that. It outspent the Labour party by about 3:2, and the Liberal Democrats by about 7:1. Conservatives have always denied that the anomaly exists; they did so in evidence to the Hansard Society and to the Home Affairs Select Committee.
The enormous anomaly is clear to every non-Conservative Member. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire is right to draw our attention to the Bowman judgment, but he surely cannot defend the existing anomaly.

Mr. Syms: Under the current electoral system, there is a clear division between what is spent in constituencies and what is spent nationally, for the sensible reason that most people who stand as candidates think that their vote will increase if they publish their name, photograph and personal details; so, in election campaigns, one can count the literature bearing the candidate's imprint and measure precisely what has been spent, whereas national expenditure is much more difficult to measure.
Under the regional list system—although we do not know the Government's final proposals—people will vote for one of the parties or for an independent. Most political advertising will by its nature be general rather than specific. In the South-East, for example, parties will

probably not put all 11 of their candidates on every piece of literature, with their dogs and families. The literature will tend to say, "Vote Conservative", "Vote Labour" or "Vote Liberal".
Trying to control expenditure at a regional level will be a real problem. One will be able to identify the few leaflets that advertise specific candidates, and it will be relatively easy to tabulate the expenditure of the independents, but it will be extremely difficult to disaggregate regional from national expenditure and determine whether a regional agent is keeping within the limit.
At present, newspaper advertising and poster sites are excluded. Would spending on those have to come within the regional limit? How would one disaggregate the readership of the Daily Mail, for example, in the south-east, the west midlands or the north?

Mr. Allan: The hon. Gentleman said that most advertising, and most voting, will be for a party rather than an individual candidate, and we feel that that strengthens the case for imposing limits on parties. He described some of the difficulties, but does he in principle think that those limits should exist?

Mr. Syms: Given the system under which we will have to operate, there will have to be a national limit. My principal point concerns how on earth we are to control a regional limit in a region the size of the South East, for example. How can we differentiate between national and regional spending?
It is perfectly easy to see who the candidates are, and what literature they have produced, in a single-member constituency, but what happens when someone in London hands out political leaflets to people getting on a train to Guildford? How do we disaggregate the expenditure? There has to be some limit somewhere, but the system chosen will be extremely difficult to operate.

Mr. Bermingham: The Bowman judgment is relevant not only to the European issue but to every form of election spending. That is my great worry. I do not want what happened with value added tax on second-hand cars—people were prosecuted and subsequently pardoned, simply because the European courts changed the law—to be replicated. I simply ask that we test what the Bowman judgment means, how broad it is, and what sums and persons it covers. Once we have done that, we will know how to frame our own legislation within the European law.

Mr. George Howarth: The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) said that he was not happy with the situation, but wanted to see how it developed and perhaps have a discussion at some point with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. He asked me to draw his observations to my right hon. Friend's attention. He knows my right hon. Friend quite well, as I do, and will know that he is an assiduous reader of everything that is put in front of him. I will draw the matter to his attention, but I am sure that he would have read the Hansard report thoroughly in any case.
We have had a useful debate on this difficult matter. Developments will have to take place. The hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) added one fresh point, to which I


shall respond briefly. The matter is not as complicated as he makes out. If expenditure is limited to promoting a regional list or a candidate who wants to be a regional MEP, that would clearly be local expenditure, and would be covered by the relevant limits.
National spending limits are under consideration by the Neill committee, and I hope that we will find an agreed way of controlling such expenditure. The accounting might be more difficult than in a single constituency, but I honestly do not think that it will be impossible. Any regional agent should be able to resolve such a problem without too much difficulty.
I hope that the Committee will feel able to support amendments Nos. 33 and 34.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 34, in page 8, line 15, at end insert
'(including expenses incurred in relation to a general election as a whole)'.

No. 35, in page 8, line 18, leave out 'of MEPs'.— [Mr. George Howarth.]

Mr. Clappison: I beg to move amendment No. 17, in page 8, line 31, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Alan Haselhurst): With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 18, in page 8, leave out lines 35 and 36.

No. 19, in page 8, line 41, at end insert—
'(c) the regulations shall require the name of each candidate to appear on the ballot paper.'.

Mr. Clappison: The amendments involve the important subject of by-elections, and we want it to be noted that we consider by-elections an important part of our political tradition from which we should not depart lightly. We need to know more about the Government's intentions. I cannot overlook the telling evidence of the manner in which the Government seek to deal with by-elections in the Bill.
The important subject of by-elections is buried in schedule 2 to the Bill, under the heading:
Minor and consequential amendments of schedule 1 to the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1978".
We regard the subject as far from minor, and its position in the Bill is telling evidence of the Government's chaotic approach. We need to know more about the contents of schedule 2. Apparently, regulations will have to be made to prescribe the procedure to be followed when a seat becomes vacant. Can the Minister give us some brief details of the proposed procedure? Will he spell out the "specified circumstances" mentioned in the schedule? We know a little about that subject from what the Home Secretary said on Second Reading, but the Minister should spell out the specified circumstances in which a by-election would be held.
We understand that it is the Government's intention that a vacancy will normally be filled by the next candidate on a party list, save in the case of the exhaustion of the list or the loss of an independent candidate. However, the Home Secretary said that that would depend

on the next candidate on the list being eligible and willing. We need to know more, including the conditions that will determine whether a candidate is eligible and willing at the time of the by-election. Who will determine that? The regulations have yet to be made and the Bill gives no guidance. The Minister should tell the Committee more about that, because the Bill remains silent.
The amendments address an important subject, given the centralised control that the Bill will introduce and the power that it will give to the party machinery. Only this morning, my eye was caught by a headline in The Herald, which revealed that the Labour party intends to ban its troublesome, left-wing Scottish Members of Parliament, but I shall not pursue that point further. I can assure the Committee that I do not spend my time trawling through the newspapers looking for details of internal strife in the Labour party, but my eye was also caught by another headline that stated:
What Derry's £59,000 could do for your walls".
I shall move swiftly on.
The amendments give the Government the opportunity to spell out how their alternatives to by-elections will work. We believe that by-elections have served this country well. They are a customary part of our political life and have had many desirable consequences for the quality and continuity of our representation in the European Parliament. The Government should tell the Committee more about their new system, instead of burying the subject in schedule 2.

Mr. Beith: Nobody loves European by-elections, least of all the electorate, who vote in extraordinarily low numbers. Under the proposed system, it seems sensible that the next person on the list should fill any vacancy that arises. I am reinforced in the view that nobody loves European by-elections by the fact that the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), who is in her place, sees no urgent need to impose one on the electors of Essex, whom she represents in the European Parliament. She is not the first to decide that it would be unreasonable to impose a by-election on the electorate, and she has accepted the almost intolerable burden of representing at the same time the Vale of York in the House of Commons and Essex in the European Parliament. Given what hon. Members have said about the demands on Members of the European Parliament, that is a serious burden indeed. It is obvious that either she does not think that she should cause a by-election or Conservative central office has said, "For heaven's sake, don't make us have a by-election."
By-elections will have to be held in some circumstances, some of which are envisaged in the drafting of the Bill. For example, a party might run out of candidates on its list if it had won all the seats in a constituency, which might happen in one or two of the smaller constituencies. The Government may have not addressed the problem of someone leaving a party since being adopted to the list, either through expulsion—like the Lord Provost in Glasgow—or by voluntarily joining another party, as people do with increasing frequency these days. Some provision should be made for such circumstances, although few parties would be enthusiastic about invoking it, because it would increase the risk of legal proceedings on the expulsion of a candidate in the first place—the Labour party has much recent experience


of such proceedings—and the party might not want to face the expense of a by-election. Certainly, most members of the public would think it ridiculous if someone could benefit from his position as next on a party's list, if he had chosen, openly and freely, to leave that party. However, in general, it would seem sensible to use the system set out in the Bill as the means of filling casual vacancies.

Miss McIntosh: I need not detain the Committee by explaining why it has not been deemed appropriate for me to cause a by-election. I merely point out that I follow a long and distinguished tradition, as the 19th Member of Parliament to have performed the onerous duties of dual representation. Indeed, many distinguished hon. Members who have found themselves in the same circumstances are now serving on the Front Benches.
We have seen the Home Secretary briefly this evening, but he is not present for the debate on these amendments. I hope that the Government will keep an open mind on continuing to hold by-elections. The same points that were made about the Government's choice of a closed rather than an open list, and about their rejection of the current system under which Members of the European Parliament are elected, are relevant. The purpose of a by-election is to maximise voter choice and to elect the candidate of the voters' choice at the time that the by-election is held. By-elections also test the popularity of the parties at the time, but the proposed system could reflect their position some three or four years earlier.
I do not have much sympathy with the argument made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), that by-elections should not be held to save taxpayers' money, although that point greatly preyed on my mind in my own circumstances. The abolition of by-elections would have the same effect as the proposed closed list and give total control over decision making to the party hierarchies, not electors. I hope that the Government understand that Conservatives stand for democracy. We believe that the electors should decide, not party hierarchies. I hope that the Government will keep an open mind, especially on amendment No. 19, which would allow the name of each candidate to appear on the ballot paper. I hope that the Government will accept it.

Mr. David Ruffley: I support the amendments, because they draw attention to the profoundly undemocratic spirit of the Bill. The Home Secretary has spoken in unusually condescending and patronising terms of the electorate's inability to distinguish between candidates. He has said that ethnic minorities and women would be disadvantaged by anything other than a closed list system. However, those are deeply anti-democratic tendencies. If the Government chose not to hold a by-election, as provided for in schedule 2, they would compound the bad effects of a bad Bill.
I support my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) in pleading with the Minister to give the Committee some comfort and say that Ministers will keep an open mind. Those members of the public who are following these proceedings will see in the passage of the Bill a profoundly undemocratic process at work.

Given Ministers' commitment to newness, modernity and democracy, I am sure that they will want to think again about the contents of schedule 2.

Mr. Gill: I rise to support amendment No. 18. If the two lines concerned are not removed from the Bill, this will be the most anti-democratic feature of a Bill already anti-democratic enough. The Committee fails to appreciate sufficiently that democracy in this country depends on people promoting others to represent them in the House of Commons or, in this case, the European Parliament. The Bill's statement that there may be circumstances in which vacancies will not be filled by election creates a dangerous precedent. The people are cut out of the equation altogether and the vacancies filled by the parties. That will lead inevitably to something that we have not seen in British politics before: corruption.
If the people do not have the ultimate sanction of voting out of office someone whom they regard as unsatisfactory or corrupt, such people cannot be removed. Under the schedule, it is possible for the parties continually to promote someone whom the electorate would not vote for because of such considerations. It is wrong that the electorate's opportunity to fill vacancies at by-elections will be removed in that way.
A vacancy may under these arrangements be filled by people whom the electorate have already rejected or who are unacceptable but who are parachuted in. That cuts across the spirit of our democracy. The voters must be the final arbiter in such matters, and the House and the parties must not remove that ability. This is a question not of the convenience of the House or politicians or of the convenience of and expense to parties but of allowing Britain's electors to retain their democratic right to be represented in whatever forum by people on whom they have had an opportunity to express some judgment. They should not have to be represented by someone on whom they have had no opportunity to express an opinion. The measure turns democracy on its head. It is anti-democratic and for that reason, I support the amendment.

Mr. Collins: In supporting the amendments, I note the extraordinary conversion of some parties on by-elections. I welcome the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman) to the Committee. He won a famous by-election victory just over a year ago. He will remember in the first days of 1997 sitting alongside the present Deputy Prime Minister saying that it was a democratic abuse that the then Prime Minister had not called the by-election. The then Prime Minister went on to call it, but the party of the hon. Member for Wirral, South no longer favours by-elections.
Even more extraordinary was the proposition of the Liberal Democrats, who have bored the pants off the entire planet for the past 30 years about victories in council and parliamentary by-elections. They now say that they do not want by-elections to the European Parliament. We understand why: they have never won a European by-election and know that they never would. That is why they want to abolish them.

Mr. George Howarth: The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) and I have one thing in common: we have both fought by-elections. I was


fortunate enough to win, and while it was unlikely that he could ever have won Bootle, he found another entry into the House.

Mr. Clappison: I fought it twice.

Mr. Howarth: Indeed, the hon. Gentleman fought it twice.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding, exemplified by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins). There is a difference between the utility of by-elections for this Parliament and their utility for the European Parliament. The purpose of the regional list system is to provide an element of proportionality in respect of votes cast for a party and the number of seats won. The Bill provides for the possibility of vacant seats being filled without a by-election, to preserve that element. A by-election for a single seat in a region would be won by the party with the greatest electoral strength there, irrespective of whether it had held the vacant seat. A by-election would disturb the element of proportionality that the regional list system brings to the result of the election. That would be unfair to the smaller parties. That is the difficulty with the amendments.
We want a proportional system for the European elections that reflects the different strengths of parties and different views across regions. A by-election held by any means imaginable would not fit the bill. Amendments Nos. 17, 18 and 19 would undermine that principle.
Amendment No. 19 refers to ballot papers for by-elections. It is customary that the same ballot papers are used for general elections and by-elections. As the Government have not confirmed that the ballot paper for general elections will include candidates' names, it would be foolish to include a provision specifically for by-elections in respect of an issue that has not yet been decided for general elections.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Does my hon. Friend agree that an electoral system without sufficient faith in the electorate to decide their representatives in a by-election must have a fundamental flaw?

Mr. Howarth: If we were dealing with a first-past-the-post, constituency system, my hon. Friend would have a point, but we are dealing with a proportional regional list system for the European Parliament. I could accept the premise of her argument only for a different set of circumstances.
I ask the hon. Member for Hertsmere not to press the amendments. They are conceived with a mindset that relates to first-past-the-post Westminster elections. They do not take account of the different arrangements that we propose. I ask him to accept that the amendments are inappropriate for our proposed regional list system.

Mr. Clappison: I have listened carefully to this useful debate. I am not convinced by the Minister's response. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) made an important contribution on the principle involved. The proposal has not only been introduced in a chaotic way; it is bad in principle.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) struck the nail on the head when he said that the guiding principle of Liberal Democrat politics is to do whatever is convenient for the Liberal Democrat party. I was surprised by the comments of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) about my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh). They were not gallant. I do not recall the Liberal Democrat party taking such a purist approach to the necessity for holding by-elections when the previous Member for Torridge and West Devon joined the Liberal Democrat party. The Liberal Democrats must have had a serious argument about the necessity of by-elections. The problem was presumably overcome by the sort of chivalry that the right hon. Gentleman has just displayed and the natural charm and affability of the lady who then represented Torridge and West Devon.
We are not convinced by the Government's arguments. The schedule, instead of being tucked away as a minor and consequential amendment, should have been headed "Mistrust of the People". It is saying that the Government do not trust the people and would rather leave the matter to party bosses and lists, to shuffling around in back rooms under party control. That is a system that we abhor. However, although I have been less than convinced by the Minister's response, in view of the lateness of the hour and the need to make progress, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments made: No. 40, in page 9, line 30, leave out 'and'.

No. 41, in page 9, line 32, at end insert—
'(c) for sub-paragraph (4) substitute—

"(4) If a person who is disqualified under this paragraph for the office of MEP is returned as an MEP under—

(a) section 3, or
(b) regulations made in accordance with paragraph 3(1), his return shall be void and his seat vacant.

(4A) If a person who is disqualified under this paragraph for the office of MEP for a particular electoral region is returned as an MEP for that region under—

(a) section 3, or
(b) regulations made in accordance with paragraph 3(1), his return shall be void and his seat vacant."; and
(d) in sub-paragraph (5), for "elected" substitute "returned".'.

No. 42, in page 9, leave out line 34 and insert—
'(2) For sub-paragraph (1) substitute—

"6.—(1) Any person may apply to the court for a declaration or, as the case may be, a declarator that a person who purports to be an MEP—

(a) is disqualified, or
(b) was disqualified at the time when, or at some time since, he was returned as an MEP under section 3 or under regulations made in accordance with paragraph 3(1).

(1A) The decision of the court on an application under this paragraph shall be final.".'.—[Mr. George Howarth.]

Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.

Schedule 3

MINOR AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS

Amendment made: No. 43, in page 10, line 30, leave out from '4.' to '(extension' in line 31 and insert—

'—(1) The European Parliamentary Elections (Changes to the Franchise and Qualification of Representatives) Regulations 1994 shall be amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 4 (offence of standing as a candidate in more than one Member State), omit paragraph (3).
(3) In regulations 7 and 9'.—[Mr. George Howarth.]

Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.

Schedule 4

REPEALS

Amendment made: No. 44, in page 11, line 19, at end insert—
'SI 1994/342. The EuropeanRegulation 4(3).'. Parliamentary Elections (Changes to the Franchise and Qualification of Representatives) Regulations 1994.

—[Mr. George Howarth.]

Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.

Bill reported, with amendments.

Bill, as amended, to be considered tomorrow.

Prevention of Terrorism

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): I beg to move,
That the draft Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 (Partial Continuance) Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 24th February, be approved.
Last year, from the Opposition Benches, I said:
In government, so long as the terrorist threat remains and there is no lasting peace, we shall maintain and operate the powers in the PTA".—[Official Report, 5 March 1997; Vol. 291, c. 928.]
Today, in seeking the renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, we seek to honour that commitment.
Like the previous Government, this Government are doing all that they can, with the police and the security agencies, to counter terrorism in the United Kingdom and that which is based from the United Kingdom. Strenuous efforts continue to be made to achieve a peaceful settlement, by consent, in Northern Ireland. But recent events in this country and across the world underline the fact that there are those who remain determined to use violent means to achieve their political ends. That is why we are seeking today the renewal of the powers under the prevention of terrorism Act.
The latest atrocity occurred on Tuesday night this week, in Poyntzpass, when Philip Allen and Damien Trainor—friends across the community divide—were shot dead while enjoying a quiet drink together in a public house. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in the House yesterday, the friendship that those men shared symbolised the future in Northern Ireland, while the gunmen who brutally murdered them represented the past. I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in extending our sympathy and condolences to the Trainor and Allen families at this devastating time and in condemning those brutal murders.

Mr. David Winnick: Before my right hon. Friend goes on, may I say that I agree entirely, as everyone in the House obviously does, with his comments about the brutal atrocity yesterday. Is he aware that many of us are very pleased indeed that the leader of the Official Unionists and our hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) visited the bereaved families? Does he agree that that demonstrates that law-abiding citizens and their political representatives in Northern Ireland want to see a settlement whereby those terrible crimes will no longer be committed?

Mr. Straw: I share my hon. Friend's view. A terrible, appalling situation has arisen in Poyntzpass, a village which, as we now know—many with a better knowledge than me knew this before—had until earlier this week managed to avoid the troubles altogether. I pay tribute to both the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon). I saw the right hon. Member for Upper Bann on television. I commend his statesmanship and his condemnation of people who claim to come from his community and appear to have committed those atrocities.
In looking at the context of this renewal debate, I want to speak about terrorism in Great Britain, about terrorism in Northern Ireland and then about international terrorism.
On terrorism in Great Britain, it is now getting on for a year since the general election campaign. One of the things that I remember about that period—others will have had personal experience of this, too—is how terrorists sought directly to disrupt the campaign. On
26 March 1997, two small high-explosive devices went off at Wilmslow railway station in Cheshire. Fortunately, there were no injuries. Then, on 3 April, two devices, one partially detonated, were found at the conjunction of the M1, M5 and M6 motorways around Birmingham. Very significant disruption of the road network ensued. Warrant Officer Alan Islam of the Royal Logistics Corps was awarded the George medal for his bravery in defusing one of the devices. A fortnight later, on 18 April, a small device exploded at a junction box near Leeds railway station and, on 25 April, two more small devices were detonated under a pylon near the M6 motorway. Over the same period, a considerable number of hoax threats were made, no doubt to cause fear and maximise disruption.
Since May, and the renewal of the IRA ceasefire on 20 July, no more terrorist devices have been found on the mainland of Great Britain. There have been considerable successes in the past year in the investigation of terrorism and the conviction of terrorists. Six men were convicted in July of conspiracy to cause explosions and were each sentenced to 35 years, imprisonment. Their intention had been to knock out the electricity grid in London and the surrounding area. In December last year, three men were sentenced to between 17 and 25 years for terrorist offences related to explosives finds. In each case, the police and the Security Service worked carefully and imaginatively to bring the terrorists to book. Their partnership against terrorism is working.
In Northern Ireland, in the period from last year's debate to 19 July—the day before the ceasefire came into force—13 people were murdered. They included two RUC officers, Constables Graham and Taylor, who were shot dead while on foot patrol in Lurgan on 16 June. During that same period, there were several attacks on the security forces and other forms of terrorist activity, including 87 punishment attacks.
In the wake of the restoration of the PIRA ceasefire on 20 July, the scale of terrorist activity in Northern Ireland has diminished somewhat, but it has not ended. Since the murder of the leading Loyalist terrorist, Billy Wright, by the Irish National Liberation Army in the Maze prison on
27 December last year, there have been three significant bomb attacks—in Enniskillen, Moira and Portadown—and 40 punishment attacks. Fourteen murders have been committed by paramilitaries on both sides of the sectarian divide.
Let me make it clear—I am sure that I also speak for the Opposition in this respect—that the recent setbacks will not deflect the Government and the parties from seeking a peaceful solution to the problems of Northern Ireland. The talks continue to progress towards an agreement between the parties, which can then be put to the people in a referendum. Above all, in my judgment and that of the Government, there is an overwhelming desire among the people of Northern Ireland for a lasting and democratic solution.
The third matter relating to the context of the debate is that of international terrorism. Thanks in no small measure to the work of the police and the security

agencies, there has been no repetition here during the past year of the bombings carried out by international terrorists in the past; but the appalling attacks that have taken place elsewhere during the past 12 months demonstrate all too clearly the need for us to stay vigilant.
The House will recall, all too starkly, that in Luxor in Egypt, 58 tourists—including six from Britain—were slaughtered in an act of senseless violence. In Algeria, literally thousands have died at the hands of ruthless terrorists. The United Kingdom is in the forefront of efforts to increase international co-operation against the threat of terrorism. We hold the presidency of the European Union and the chairmanship of the G8 countries; we are progressing work in both those forums on, among other things, countering terrorist fund raising and arms trafficking by terrorists.
We are also determined to ensure that this country is not used in any way as a base for those supporting terrorism overseas. I have power under the Immigration Act 1971, as modified by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997, to exclude any foreign national from the United Kingdom if his or her presence here is not conducive to the public good. I have used that power 26 times since becoming Home Secretary. In 1997, 12 people were detained under the prevention of terrorism Act in connection with international terrorism, as compared with two in 1996. Of those 12, criminal charges were laid in seven cases. It is simply not the case, as some abroad have suggested, that the United Kingdom is a safe haven for those who support or promote terrorism.
As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will make clear in an address to the Anglo-Arab Association this evening, we already do all that we can to curb the activities of any terrorists found here, to bring them to trial where they commit criminal offences and to deport them where appropriate. In addition, we intend to bring forward specific legislation as soon as possible to make it illegal to conspire in the UK to commit terrorist acts abroad. All that must and will, of course, be consistent with our obligations on asylum under the 1951 convention and our commitment to free speech; but the bottom line is that neither terrorists nor supporters of terrorism are welcome in any way in the UK and we shall do all that we can to make sure that that message gets across loud and clear.
As I made clear in my statement to the House on 30 October last year, the Government will never drop their guard in the fight against terrorism. In the light of all that I have just outlined, it is clearly vital that the police and security agencies continue to have the powers to prevent, where possible, and otherwise to investigate, terrorist incidents.
Informing our debate is the report on the operation of the prevention of terrorism Act in 1997 prepared by the reviewer, John Rowe QC. I am very grateful to him for his clear and independent scrutiny of the operation of the legislation and I am pleased that he was able to conclude that the provisions were operated carefully in accordance with the law.
The powers that Mr. Rowe's report surveys include those, in specified areas and for a limited period, to stop and search individuals and vehicles for articles connected with terrorism and to set up cordons and impose parking restrictions. Mr. Rowe reports that all those powers were


exercised fairly and in accordance with the law in 1997. He draws similar conclusions about the operation of the powers to investigate terrorist finances.
Mr. Rowe's report records that, apart from air and sea ports, the arrest and detention powers were used in 1997 in Great Britain on about 30 occasions and in Northern Ireland about 500 times. In each case, he reports that the powers were used properly, as they were at air and sea ports in the same period. In Great Britain, the initial period of detention was extended on nine occasions, as against 23 in 1996; and in Northern Ireland there were 72 extensions, as against 48 in 1996. In his report, Mr. Rowe recommends that the existing port powers should be extended. We shall consider that recommendation in the context of the forthcoming consultation paper on permanent anti-terrorism legislation.
Let me deal briefly with the issue of a judicial element in extension of detention decisions. We have long believed that there is a strong case for that. Mr. Rowe, in his report, supports such a move in principle, while highlighting the inconsistencies that would arise if a judicial element were introduced in Great Britain but not in Northern Ireland. Of course, Lord Lloyd recommended as much in his inquiry into legislation against terrorism. The whole issue will be fully covered in the forthcoming consultation paper on permanent UK-wide counterterrorist legislation but, until any new legislation is introduced, it would not be prudent to leave the police without the existing executive mechanism for extending detentions. Otherwise, they would not have the means to seek the extended detention of suspected terrorists.

Mr. A. J. Beith: Despite our respect for much of what he says, we do not accept Mr. Rowe's conclusion that we cannot do that in Great Britain so long as we cannot do it in Northern Ireland. Does the Home Secretary recognise that circumstances in Northern Ireland should not be a bar to improving the way in which the process is conducted in Great Britain?

Mr. Straw: The right hon. Gentleman makes a strong case and it is palpable that there are several arrangements, especially in this sector, which differ between the mainland and Northern Ireland. We shall bear that point in mind.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: I hope that my right hon. Friend will not follow the line of logic drawn by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith). If it is right for changes to be made in Great Britain, it must be right that they should be made in Northern Ireland. Indeed, we have entered a derogation because of that.

Mr. Straw: I have already said to the House that it is hardly surprising that we wish to see a judicial element in extensions of detention in any event, but there is an issue surrounding how that is brought in and, as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said, it is a fact that arrangements have differed in the past. I shall bear in mind what my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) says, but I ask him to be patient until we introduce the consultation document on the future of anti-terrorist legislation. By way of reassurance, I can tell my hon. Friend that I have looked carefully for a way

to introduce a judicial element in the extension of detention decisions within existing legislation, but it is not possible to do so.
Let me now deal with exclusion powers. Since my statement in October last year, in which I announced the revocation of the 12 remaining orders, I have kept under close review the issue of whether or not those powers should be renewed. At that time, I said that, assuming the security situation did not change, I was minded to see the powers lapsed. Since then, I have, of course, been regularly briefed on security matters and I have kept in close touch with colleagues with responsibility for counter-terrorism. As one would expect, I have also closely read Mr. Rowe's views as set out in his report.
The House will be aware of this Government's long opposition to exclusion powers both on policy grounds, in that they amount to a form of internal exile fundamentally undermining the integrity of the United Kingdom, and because of their limited utility. Nothing in the current security situation, nor any argument of policy that has been put to me, shakes me from the view that it is right for those powers to lapse and the order before the House achieves that end.
I do not lightly set aside the views of Mr. Rowe on the matter. In each of his five years as reviewer, he has argued that the powers are useful and should be retained. Our different stances on that matter are, therefore, nothing new; but nor is it without precedent for a Home Secretary to take issue with a recommendation made by the independent reviewer of the prevention of terrorism Act. Lord Colville, Mr. Rowe's predecessor, in a major review of prevention of terrorism legislation published in 1987, argued that exclusion powers were "draconian" and that they should be removed from the statute book despite the fact that terrorist activity continued at a high level. However, the then Home Secretary, now Lord Hurd of Westwell, decided that it was expedient that they should be retained. We are grateful to reviewers, but Ministers must make propositions to the House, which the House must then determine.

Mr. Tim Collins: The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it is the responsibility of Ministers and the House to take decisions on those matters. In his earlier remarks, he referred to his statement last October, when he said that, if the security situation did not change, he would be minded to do as he now proposes to do. Will he explain to the House why he believes that the security situation has not changed, given that, since last October, according to the Government's own assessment, the IRA has returned to a campaign of murder?

Mr. Straw: As the whole House knows, the situation has changed in some particulars, but the issue is whether it has changed sufficiently to warrant the continued availability of the powers, day by day, to a Secretary of State. In fact, those powers will formally remain on the statute book in any event. I have considered the matter very carefully, as I hope that the hon. Gentleman would expect of me, but I do not believe that the situation has changed sufficiently significantly to justify those powers remaining operative, and available day by day to the Secretary of State.
As it happens, until there can be an opportunity for the House and the other place wholly to revise counterterrorism legislation—and, I hope, to place it on a


permanent basis—the powers will remain on the statute book, and could be activated if that was a determination of a future Government or in certain circumstances.
Despite the arguments about the effectiveness of the exclusion powers, it is worth pointing out that they were already withering on the vine under the previous Administration. No orders have been in force in Northern Ireland since 1995. Despite the fact that the ceasefire ended, none was reinstated in Northern Ireland after that period. As for the mainland, my predecessor, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), made no new orders in 1996 or 1997, despite a resurgence of violence, leaving 22 in force when I came into office.
Under the prevention of terrorism Act, it is my responsibility to ensure that exclusion powers are used only when I judge them to be expedient to prevent acts of terrorism. I repeat that it is my best assessment that I do not consider that their use can be justified, and therefore I have decided that they should not form part of the Act to be renewed this year. The forthcoming consultation paper on permanent counter-terrorism legislation will provide the opportunity for discussion on whether these powers should be retained permanently or abolished.
Before concluding, I shall make some brief remarks about that consultation paper, which I told the House in October 1997 that we were preparing. The consultation paper will draw very strongly on the recommendations of Lord Lloyd of Berwick's recent report on legislation against terrorism, but it will also take into account other matters.
Lord Lloyd was asked to consider the need for specific counter-terrorism legislation in the event of a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. Sadly, that eventuality has not yet occurred. However, that does not mean that we must shelve consideration of the recommendations. Terrorism is not a temporary phenomenon anywhere in the world.
The forthcoming paper will set out proposals for permanent legislation to deal with the continuing threat. The aim will be one robust and clear framework of powers for the whole United Kingdom—I say that to my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North—both effective and proportionate to the threat, to deal with all forms of terrorism.
In the meantime, pending any changes in the principal Acts, the police and the security forces must continue to have the powers that they need to fight terrorism. Those powers are contained in the order before the House. Events of the past few days serve simply to emphasise the need for counter-terrorist powers, and the Government will not shirk from their responsibility to provide them. I commend the order to the House.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: Mr. Rowe, whose report is central to our debate tonight, should be thanked for his report, which reflects conclusions based on much detailed work and wise consideration. I am happy to join the Home Secretary in extending our thanks to him for the work that he has done.
In the context of Northern Ireland, Mr. Rowe says on page 10 of his report:
I am clear in my conclusion. Both in Northern Ireland and Great Britain there was terrorist activity in 1997 and it has continued in 1998. Furthermore the threat of it is real.
In 1997 the outward indications of it in Great Britain were the explosive devices which exploded or which were found before they exploded"—
as the Home Secretary said—
and in Northern Ireland there were many incidents of violence, whether or not with explosives and firearms, and they have continued into 1998.
The terrorist organisations—proscribed and otherwise—are still in place: they have their structures, and they are busy at various activities.
In the context of the international situation, Mr. Rowe said on page 12:
The summary is this. On the one hand there have not been many major incidents in the United Kingdom during 1997, such as explosions or shootings; on the other hand there have been persons here committed to supporting terrorist acts here or abroad, with arms and violence, and they are still a threat.
He concludes on page 13:
In all these circumstances the threat of terrorism here is a real one.
We agree with that assessment, so we support the renewal of the order. We are reinforced in that view by what happened in Poyntzpass earlier this week—to which the Home Secretary has referred. I make it clear on behalf of the Opposition that, as was the case yesterday also, we extend our sympathy and our condolences to the families and to the friends of those who were killed and injured.
Two men were friends for many years. They lived together happily. They drank together, happily. They worked and relaxed together, happily. It is worth taking a moment, in this very serious debate about security matters, to reflect on the fact that that is not an uncommon situation in Northern Ireland. The nature of terrorism and its reporting tends to focus on the evil—on the black deeds that are done. But there is much in life in Northern Ireland that is normal, and which all of us would recognise as being on a par with the type of activity that takes place in our own constituencies.
It may be worth reminding ourselves that the basis of that stability is something that is common to the Catholic and Protestant theological traditions in Northern Ireland—the belief, at the heart of the Christian gospel, that man was made in the image of God. Respect for individuals in our society ultimately derives from that piece of fundamental theology, and that was exemplified in that bar in Poyntzpass.
For several years, much effort has been made to find ways in which to enable members of the community to come together and do things together, in a way that became naturally more normal. I am sure that the present Government will continue with such efforts; I make no partisan point whatever. Attempts were made to generate employment, and to diminish and remove discrimination in the workplace.
I had the honour, in the House, to put integrated education on the statute book, to enable those who wanted to choose to have their children educated in that framework to do so. In the same piece of legislation, I introduced, in the new Northern Ireland national curriculum, education for mutual understanding and


courses on cultural heritage, which for the first time opened up to the young people of the Province an understanding of the various traditions in which they found themselves. In that legislation, I also established the Community Relations Council. It is a matter of record that I made available grants, funded by the taxpayer, to explore the history of the Orange Order. I probably gave more support to the integration of the Irish language into the life of Northern Ireland than any of my predecessors.
I want to encourage the House by reminding hon. Members that all over the Province, there are good people, living and working together in a spirit of harmony, which was reflected by those two men—by Damien and by Philip—in the bar on Tuesday. However, I was also Minister responsible for security, so I have a fairly well-informed understanding of the callousness, the evil and the immorality that constitute those who take part in terrorism.
It is worth reminding ourselves that terrorism is worse than murder, for terrorism not only kills indiscriminately, but is intended to create fear. Above all, it is the refuge of those who have turned their backs on the democratic process—who cannot win in the ballot box, so they turn to the bomb and the bullet.
There is terrorism in Northern Ireland, whether it is on the loyalist side or the republican side, and whether it is associated with organisations that have been at the heart of terrorism for the past 30 years or with new groupings—or perhaps with new names for old groupings. That terrorist threat is real. Each bomb, each murder is an attack not just on individuals, but on the community.
There are other attacks—for example, the targeting of individuals. I pay particular tribute to the members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, prison officers and others, part of whose daily life is to be at risk of being targeted. I pay tribute also to civil servants. I have known people in all three categories who, at a moment's notice, have had to move house because of the risk to their lives as a consequence of such clandestine activity.
Fear and intimidation are generated through kneecapping and by threatening shopkeepers. I have met children who sat in their front room and saw their father gunned down in front of them.
Let us never in this House fall into the danger of discussing terrorism as some sort of intellectual concept that is distasteful. It is vile, wicked and evil, and it is designed to be such. Any democratic Government who seek to defend the rights of their people have a right to put in place orders that, in a normal environment, would cause significant debate. It is right for the Government to make those orders and to see that they are used.
I will articulate why we feel so strongly about the legislation and its annual renewal. I do not intend to go into history, but if the right hon. Gentleman hears in my voice the importance that we attach to it, he will understand, at least in part, why we reacted with so much anger, year after year, when mixed messages went out from this House as the renewal was debated.
The other reason why we feel so strongly about having the legislation available is that it sends a message to the good, law-abiding, resilient, upright people of the Province. I am biased. I declare a vested interest. I know that my accent sounds as though I was born and raised in Peterborough, but that is not the case.
I say with great pride, some emotion and much truth that the people of Northern Ireland deserve the highest praise for their courage, resilience and unwillingness to bow to the terrorist. I say the same of the police and the security forces. They have shown admirable courage, restraint and professionalism. They, too, deserve the renewal of the order.
The Secretary of State said that he would produce a consultation paper. He promised it last year and he has promised it this year.

Mr. Straw: I promised it for this year.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: Exactly. I understand what the situation was on 5 March last year. We look forward to discussing the consultation paper when it arrives. Whatever may be the outcome of the consultation process on the issues surrounding detention, which we may want to discuss with the right hon. Gentleman in more detail depending on what is in the consultation document, I am sure that he is right to take the view that nothing should be changed in the interim. We support him in that judgment.
The right hon. Gentleman also said that he would allow exclusion orders to lapse. That has been a matter of considerable debate. No one in the House has always been entirely comfortable with the concept of exclusion orders, but there have been pragmatic and security reasons for introducing them.
I join the right hon. Gentleman in his judgment that Mr. Rowe offered him good advice, but he is the Home Secretary and the decision must be his. Whether or not we agree with his decision, I for one defend his right to make that decision.
The advice that the Home Secretary got from Mr. Rowe on exclusion orders was based on Mr. Rowe's summary in paragraph 30 on page 16, in which he stated:
I have seen no improper use of the power of the exclusion order, this year or previously.
He went on to say in paragraph 33:
My own view is that the exclusion power is effective. And it has been used properly … But as to the future, the announcement that the power may be allowed to lapse will not deflect me from my view: the exclusion order is a useful part of the prevention of terrorism machinery".
I have already underlined my acceptance of the fact that the decision is for the Secretary of State to make. I hope that he will do so with his usual sensitivity, recognising that there remains an argument for a different decision. I hope that he will not close his mind to the future possible use of such orders, should the situation deteriorate in a way that neither he nor I would wish.
However the future develops, we agree with the Home Secretary, as we made clear last year, that there will be a continuing need for legislation. I hope that the Home Secretary will abide by the view of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who was his predecessor, and the views that he himself expressed on 5 March last year—that the House will need to be assured that the situation genuinely has changed before it will be prepared to reconsider with enthusiasm the legislation that we are discussing.
I take this opportunity to affirm again, although I expect that the Home Secretary does not need me to do so, that we support the Government in the talks process. We support the Government in their determination to try


to find a way forward. We support the Government, as we demonstrated over many years, in recognising that there must be a political, not just a security solution in Northern Ireland.
I shall deal briefly with international terrorism, to which the right hon. Gentleman also referred. I refer to last year's debate in which the then Home Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, said:
One area that Lord Lloyd looked at particularly closely was legislation to deal with the activities of United Kingdom supporters of foreign terrorism. He concluded:
'The most significant additional measure which the Government can take is to amend the law of conspiracy so as to facilitate the prosecution of those who conspire here to commit terrorist acts abroad. It may take a prosecution or two before the measure takes full effect but it should then serve as a demonstration, both to those involved and to the international community, of the Government's determination to make the UK as difficult and uncomfortable a place as possible for supporters of terrorism overseas.—[Official Report, 5 March 1997; Vol. 291, c. 923.]
The Home Secretary has gone out of his way to say that the United Kingdom is not a safe haven for terrorists. He said that the Foreign Secretary would be making that point in a speech this evening. The right hon. Gentleman knows that that is a view that is shared across the Floor of the House, and that we robustly took the same view when we were in government.
The right hon. Gentleman and I, as present and past senior Ministers, also know that there is a perception in the wider international community that there is more that the United Kingdom Government could do to help to curb international terrorism. Both of us might take the view that some of the criticism to which this country has been exposed is unfair. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which, at least in part, that perception exists. Lord Lloyd clearly thinks that it exists.
We hope that the Home Secretary, in his consultation document, will spend some time reflecting on what other steps might be taken to enhance our legislative framework in order to deal with some of the threats that we face. If, at any point, the right hon. Gentleman would find it helpful to consult on these issues, we would be more than happy to do so.
We are here to confirm the renewal of the order; it is part of a continuing process. Already, Ministers—perhaps also Mr. Rowe and others—will be giving thought to whether there are other things that might be done that would be helpful in combating terrorism.
I shall mention briefly two areas that I hope the Home Secretary will consider further. First, there is the financing of terrorism. In the debate last year, my right hon. and learned Friend the then Home Secretary said:
I am determined that the police should have all the powers they need to combat effectively the current threat from terrorism. That is why I intend to introduce proposals in due course to strengthen the existing controls on terrorist finances. Those proposals will build on Lord Lloyd's very helpful ideas."—[Official Report, 5 March 1997; Vol. 291, c. 923.]
We have not changed our view since last year.
We put in place some fairly draconian measures in a free society. With the support of the House and, in quite specific terms, with the support of the present Home Secretary and his colleagues who were then on the

Opposition Front Bench, we introduced some additional preventive powers. Those powers have been useful, and Mr. Rowe commends their being and their use. However, the Home Secretary knows that those who operate in such a climate are seriously devious. I expect that the Home Secretary will share my concern, for example, about the money in Northern Ireland that appears to be getting into the drugs trade. I hope that he will commission, if he has not already, a serious review of what can be done to strengthen measures against the financing of terrorism.
I would also like the Home Secretary to consider intimidation—the creation of a climate of fear that stops short of actual violence, but which in itself can be almost as debilitating to a community and to individuals. I think of shopkeepers who are forced to close their legitimate businesses because somebody walks through the door and issues a veiled, and sometimes not so veiled, threat to their business and to their livelihood if they do not do what the bully boys say.
I think also of those shopkeepers who talk to us—and, no doubt, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—about those who go into shops and say, "We are happy for you to continue trading but we want 25 quid a week." That 25, 50 or 100 quid, whatever it may be, goes to finance terrorism in whatever form. That happens on both sides of the community—I make no particular point—and it is a form of terrorism. It is part of the package that we all wish to resist.
I think of civil servants who are doing their job on behalf of the community, who in the doing of it expose themselves to threats from others in the community who want an unfair advantage or who do not want those civil servants to behave as their masters, the Ministers, would wish them to.
I think also of local newspaper editors, who are put under the most enormous pressure by quiet chats in their own areas to slant their newspaper coverage, one way or the other, to suit local terrorist activists. I could continue, but I do not wish to for I have made the point. I hope that the Home Secretary will consider the areas to which I have referred.
The powers set out in the order are necessary, are used and are effective. Unless and until the everyday world of Northern Ireland changes, along with international relations and intrigue, the powers remain a significant part of the democratic fight against terrorism. We support the order.
Issues of funding, stop and search, detention and border and port controls, to which Mr. Rowe refers—and others—raise various areas of civil rights. The most damning indictment in civil rights terms is denial of the right to live, along with the right to live a quality of life without fear. The House has never had any difficulty in deciding between those competing civil rights. The powers set out in the order must be retained and implemented, and we give them our unconditional support.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: It is not my intention to keep the House long. First, I join my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) in expressing my sympathy to the families and friends of those who were brutally murdered or wounded in South Armagh


the other day. I urge my colleagues to put their names to the early-day motion, of which I am a sponsor, that expresses the revulsion that the House feels about that incident.
I welcome yet again, with two-and-a-half cheers, the progress that my right hon. Friend has made towards implementing what he said before the general election he would do. The decision to allow exclusion orders to lapse is of profound importance, including mental importance.
We were saying that a man or woman could be restricted to a particular area, as in Northern Ireland, or parts of Great Britain. We were saying also that they could not move or know the evidence that was being used against them: they could not challenge it. They were subject to an interview behind closed doors, and that was it. If they were sent back to Northern Ireland, they were made prisoners within their own community. Often, they were unable to obtain employment. Often, by the nature of what had been said about them, they were targets for the other side, whichever side that might have been. That was a denial of what the House stands for; we should not agree with it.
I welcome the steps that my right hon. Friend has taken and the fact that he has rejected Mr. Rowe's advice. It is interesting that my right hon. Friend is criticised for rejecting that advice when advice offered by Lord Colville to liberalise the legislation was continually rejected by the Conservatives when they were in power. They accepted no meaningful reduction of the draconian powers in the order.
I understand my right hon. Friend's difficulties and welcome his undertaking about the need for judicial intervention when a person is detained for any length of time so that we come into line with the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. I very much regret that one of the Human Rights Bill's main proposals was to put immediately into statute a derogation, albeit with provision for it to be removed.
It would have been far better to have a Bill without a derogation and then to include it, which would have shown intent and the direction in which the Government were going. The ability to have a derogation will exist irrespective of whether we have the Bill. It would have been a better example to have on the statute book the European convention on human rights in its entirety, without the derogation. The steps taken by my right hon. Friend are welcome.
I shall make one point on Lord Lloyd's report—we await with interest the consultative document that my right hon. Friend will produce. The document and the legislation must lean towards civil liberties. It is always difficult against a background of terror and violence to talk about the freedom of the individual, but if we are unprepared to accept those freedoms—I accept that the most basic and fundamental freedom is the right to life—in the most difficult situations, we are falling into the very trap that the terrorists create for us.
When we start to lower our standards, we do two things: first, we give terrorists the opportunity to cry foul, which they frequently do when they have been guilty of the most despicable acts; secondly, we allow ourselves to become hardened, to accept these things and to lower our own sensibilities. We cannot afford to let that happen when pursuing individual human rights. In human rights it is the hard case, the nasty case, the awkward case, that has to be defended, and we must ensure that all the

rules—the proper rules, the rule of law—are upheld and not allowed to be bent, for whatever good, immediate, expedient or pragmatic reason, as that takes us down the spiral that the terrorists want us to go down, to give the pseudo-justification that they claim for their actions.
On international terrorism, my right hon. Friend made the point—it cannot be underlined too much—that although we cannot have in this country people plotting vile acts of terrorism, we must be careful with the regimes that allege that that is happening and remember the practices of the regimes themselves. It is strange that regimes that allow the stoning of women taken in adultery and allow public executions and hands to be chopped off for theft complain about the actions of some of their citizens in this country.
We may not justify what their citizens might be doing in this country, but we have a proper history of being prepared to be a haven for people who seek to subvert some of those regimes, some of which are our best customers for some of our best hardware. We must be able to say to those regimes that while their people are in this country and are not engaging specifically and directly in organising acts of terrorism, they will be allowed to stay, to protect their own lives and to establish their rights of free speech and criticism. It should not be a part of any British Government to take the role of a Rupert Murdoch with regard to criticism of the Chinese Government.

Mr. A. J. Beith: We have heard in the two preceding speeches the balance that must be struck when trying to ensure that terrorists do not take away the civil rights of the people to whom they pose many other threats. We must ensure that we do not make it possible or easy for terrorists to take away the most basic civil right, people's right to life—the right that was so brutally taken away from Philip Allen and Damien Trainor in Poyntzpass.
It is not many weeks since a friend of mine, a much-loved Presbyterian minister who had served for decades in my constituency, was buried in Poyntzpass. He lived to be nearly 100 and hoped to see in his lifetime peace come to his beloved home Province. He would have been shocked to realise that his funeral would be followed not long after by those of two young men who had their whole lives ahead of them. Their ability to get on with each other across the community divide was one of the things that terrorists hate and attack.
In its brutality, the incident underlined that what terrorists destroy is people's ability to live their lives as they choose, which is one of the most basic freedoms. We must recognise that the problem may well increase, the closer we get to a settlement—a point that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has made. It is not that the people of Northern Ireland cannot reach a settlement or endorse one in a democratic vote, but that there will be many threats to them as they go through that difficult process. Furthermore, as is reflected in the order, there is a chance of threats to people in Great Britain.
None of that should deflect us from the search for a peaceful settlement—in which all the parties are currently engaged—but if anyone thinks that the arrival of a settlement will bring an end to terrorism, they are mistaken, because however broadly a settlement is endorsed, there will still be those who want to fight


against it and try to use terrorist methods to do so. The broader the settlement, the more the supply lines of terrorists can be broken, their refuges removed and their ability to operate in a community destroyed, but their efforts may linger for a little while, even if a settlement is achieved. That fact underlines the necessity for the order.
It is a matter of regret that we have to have extraordinary security powers, which in some measure undermine or remove some of our civil liberties, but they are part of the process of protecting the most basic liberty—the liberty to live one's life without the threat of violence. Because the powers are exceptional, we subject them to exceptional scrutiny. Mr. Rowe's report is part of that process. He states:
The PTA makes inroads upon civil rights; there are offences which are unusual, and there are powers which are larger than ordinary".
They are extraordinary because of the nature of the threat that we have faced.
We welcome the Government's intention to consult on the implementation of more permanent UK-wide counter-terrorism legislation to deal with longer-term threats and look forward to the discussions that will take place on the consultation document. International terrorism is unlikely to disappear and various groups around the world may resort to it. In the longer term, we hope that legislation will be more limited in scope and more precise in impact than that which has been necessary to deal with the Irish-based threat of recent years.
I emphasise the targeting of the financing and organisation of terrorism. Mr. Rowe stressed the importance of measures aimed at undermining the funding of terrorism. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) drew attention to the intimidation used to obtain such funding. Even when terrorist organisations are not bombing and killing, their structures remain in place and their fund-raising and organisational activities continue. We should direct as much effort as possible at intimidatory and illegal fund raising.
For two consecutive years, Mr. Rowe has highlighted concern about the adequacy of staffing of port control facilities, where the legislation is implemented. He has not said that there is a crisis, but Ministers should consider the matter carefully.
In an intervention, I made it clear that Liberal Democrats want a judicial role in the extension of detention, which is an extraordinary power. The Home Secretary has indicated his interest in moving on the matter. Mr. Rowe is in favour of the proposal, but believes that it would not be right to implement it in Great Britain if it cannot be implemented in Northern Ireland. Mr. Rowe has made it clear in consecutive reports that the proposals could not be implemented in Northern Ireland because judges there cannot yet be asked to extend detention.
Aspects of the judicial system in Northern Ireland, such as the Diplock courts and non-jury trials, are not ideal. I hope that those aspects will be changed as soon as is reasonable, given the security situation in Northern Ireland, but there is no barrier to the judiciary in Great Britain becoming involved in extending detention. People in Northern Ireland may be denied a further safeguarding

of their civil rights because of the problems of the judiciary having that power at the moment, but that does not justify not proceeding with the measure in Great Britain.
We agree with the Home Secretary that exclusion orders should not be continued. They send the wrong signal. The signal that we are trying to send is that people are citizens of the United Kingdom, no matter what part of it they live in. The discussions on the future of Northern Ireland are not designed to take away that entitlement. Indeed, they may produce further entitlements, especially if a settlement is reached that makes different sections of the community in Northern Ireland feel comfortable with the constitution: a minority of the community has been unhappy with it for many years.
Exclusion orders send the wrong signal. They no longer have the same security value and they give ammunition to people outside the country who argue that our activities in Northern Ireland are repressive when, in fact, they protect the civil rights of citizens in every part of the community.
I made the point to Mr. Rowe that, when these and other measures are being scrutinised, as much detailed information as possible must be examined. His review of decisions, which is a random examination of cases, is important because people who do not see such information must be confident that he can say with certainty that procedures have been followed correctly and that processes have been used in the right way and for the right purpose.
Mr. Rowe should play the same role as the commissioner under the Interception of Communications Acts and be able to examine intelligence information without identifying sources. Then, we could be sure that the information justified the action. If the information that is available to him is only second hand, he will not be able to make the judgments that we want him to make. Such judgments should be examined by one person occasionally rather than by a wider group of people. The fewer people have access to that information, the easier it will be to maintain security in the future.
Mr. Rowe does not want to see the details of the intelligence information on which decisions are based, but giving him a role similar to that of the commissioner under the Interception of Communications Acts would help him to make his decisions.
The order should be renewed. The powers, which are necessary, are exercised by people in the various services who often place their lives at risk while defending us all. We always emphasise the maintenance of civil rights, but we also acknowledge that the order is a regrettable necessity.

Helen Jones: I represent a town that knows only too well the consequences of our failure to defeat terrorism. Warrington has suffered two IRA bombings, the second of which killed two children and injured several other people. Where I come from, we never underestimate the magnitude of the terrorist threat.
A large number of people of Irish descent live in my constituency. They are law-abiding people and I am conscious of the need to protect their civil liberties. I am acutely aware of the balance that must be struck


in anti-terrorism legislation. Wherever the terrorist threat comes from, there will always be tension between the rights of those who may be suspected, sometimes wrongly, of committing a crime, and the rights of those who must be protected from violence.
We walk a tightrope, and we must be honest as legislators and admit that we do not always get it right. Few hon. Members would argue that the prevention of terrorism Act is flawless, but, equally, no one could argue that such legislation should not remain on the statute book. As the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) rightly said, terrorism is not only about murder, but about undermining the fabric of society. Terrorists attempt to make normal life impossible. While the terrorist threat remains, there must be a law on the statute book to combat it.
It is our duty to think clearly about which powers in the order are necessary. There is no dispute about several of them. The reviewer showed clearly that powers to stop and search and to impose cordons and parking restrictions have been operated carefully and in accordance with the law. Those powers must be used only in specified areas and for limited periods, but those who argue that they should not remain on the statute book are telling my constituents that the police and the security forces should be denied the power to prevent someone from driving a bomb into the middle of town if they ever, God forbid, received information about another bombing in my area. My constituents would not accept such an untenable argument.
We all agree that the powers that we are discussing tonight represent a restriction on the civil liberties of ordinary law-abiding people. Of course they do—but the greatest restriction on anyone's civil liberty is the ending of his or her life. Two children in Warrington suffered the greatest possible restriction on their liberty.
I accept that there is more concern about the powers of arrest and detention under the Act. The evidence is that they are used sparingly in Great Britain, although perhaps more widely in Northern Ireland. However, each time they are used is a cause for concern. Although I believe in the right of the police to detain suspected terrorists, I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that he would consider introducing a judicial element into the continuation of that detention. The threat to civil liberty is such that ultimately we shall have to take that course of action. I accept that it cannot be done under the current framework but I hope that the matter will be addressed in future.
I cannot support the use of exclusion orders, however, and I am glad that they will be allowed to lapse. I do not believe that they work or that they prevent terrorism; they merely move the threat somewhere else. They introduce into the United Kingdom a form of internal exile that cannot be tolerated in a united country.
The decisions that we have to make this evening are not easy, straightforward or welcomed by anyone in the House, but I believe that we have got the balance about right. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that what we have before us tonight will not suffice in the long term.
The terrorist threat will not go away. Even if we achieve peace in Northern Ireland—as all right hon. and hon. Members hope—there will still be a threat of international terrorism. Last year, 12 people were detained

under the prevention of terrorism Act in connection with international terrorism. We need to ensure international co-operation against that threat, but in the long term we need permanent anti-terrorism legislation that has been properly discussed and considered by the House. I hope that we shall press ahead with the consultation that my right hon. Friend mentioned and that, in due time, proposals will be brought before the House for us to debate and consider properly. Until then, my constituents and others deserve protection from acts of random and senseless violence. If the House wills those ends, it has to be prepared to legislate the means.
The Act is not perfect, but the order gives my constituents and others the protection that they need and for that reason I commend it to the House.

Mr. David Trimble: I rise to support the extension of the legislation for another year. I shall not try to emulate the speech by the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) as I could not better his eloquent description of the threat. I shall refer to some specific points in Mr. Rowe's report and then make some general comments.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Rowe for his report. It meets the standard of previous reports and contains the views of many who have commented on the legislation and acted for the House in that respect. We need to put on record our indebtedness to him for his careful work.
I support the action that the Home Secretary has taken in respect of exclusion orders. As he knows, we have been critical of exclusion orders as a matter of principle. The hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) described them as "internal exile", but that is not entirely accurate. I could be attracted to the notion of internal exile, properly described, particularly the way in which it operates with regard to the Mafiosi in Italy, where it has been extremely effective. However, exclusion orders are a crude device and they are objectionable in principle.
I note with interest Mr. Rowe's comments on detention powers. I wish that some of those who criticise the legislation, the powers of detention and the provision for the extension of detention for up to seven days would read pages 26 and 27 of the report and see Mr. Rowe's careful consideration of the use of those powers. He does not act as a judge deciding whether detention was correct in any particular case; he simply checks that the procedures were followed and that the legislation was properly applied. However, one could not fail to read that passage and similar passages in previous reports without realising that the powers are being exercised sparingly, here and in Northern Ireland.
I note the comments of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) with regard to intelligence, and I do not disagree with his suggestion that Mr. Rowe might look more closely into the cases. Of the three extensions of detention founded purely on intelligence grounds, two cases resulted in criminal charges, so intelligence is not being used simply to cover abuse of the legislation.
The House will know that in previous years we argued for a judicial element in extensions of detention. I consider the comments that have been made on the issue this evening to be misconceived, as is Mr. Rowe's report. People are paying too much attention to the word


"judicial" and giving it an interpretation that is understandable here, without appreciating that the term originates in the European convention and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
When we talk of a judicial element in the extension of detention, we mean judicial not in the sense of a High Court judge, but as the word is applied in the European convention and defined by the European Court of Human Rights and within the practice of other European legal systems. It would mean importing into our legal system a feature of continental procedures. It should not involve giving our judges a task that is inappropriate for them. I hope that we do not do that.
It would be much better to look at the practice elsewhere. In many respects, that is unnecessary and our own practice is superior to that in continental countries, but because of the interpretation of the convention by the European Court at Strasbourg, it is necessary for us to follow what I consider to be the inferior practice of some continental legal systems. However, in this context the word "judicial" should be understood as it applies in the convention and as it is interpreted by the European Court at Strasbourg and by other continental countries. If it is understood that the term "judicial" does not apply to proper judges and that distinction is borne in mind, there is no problem with judicial participation and no distinction needs to be drawn between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Therefore, I consider the discussion on the issue to have been misconceived.
On port and entry powers, I note Mr. Rowe's reference to manifests on page 34. His comments are eminently sensible. I mention in passing that we have a common travel area in the British Isles, but it seems to operate more on informal understandings than on a clear legal basis. I sometimes think that there is a case for having our own mini-Schengen agreement, to put matters on a more regular basis. However, that is another issue.
I underline the points made by other hon. Members with regard to terrorist financing. It is an important issue—the Achilles heel of terrorist organisations—which, until recently, has not received much attention. I consider that it is still not receiving enough attention. There are powers in the existing legislation and we are told that they are being utilised, but we see little evidence of that. We see very few cases being brought and very little sign of money and assets being confiscated. That is the test of the effectiveness of the legislation. The powers are used largely to deter and to gather intelligence.
There is a parallel with the approach to intercepted communications. Too often, the emphasis is on gathering intelligence rather than finding evidence with which to obtain convictions. There is a difference in approach between the security services and the police forces. We need the approach of the police forces, whose aim is to obtain evidence to secure convictions. Gathering intelligence is not sufficient—we must go beyond that.
Hon. Members have also referred to international terrorism. The evidence of arrests and charges shows the need to maintain the legislation to deal with that. The treatment of people who sought political asylum in the 19th century is no longer practical. At the end of the 20th century, with modern communications and travel methods, those who come here seeking political asylum

could easily be involved in terrorism and pose a threat to other countries. We have an obligation under international law to ensure that our territory is not used as a base to attack societies elsewhere. That may mean an occasional regrettable intrusion into the circumstances of those who have sought refuge here, but that is unfortunately necessary.
I endorse the comments that have been made about the appalling murders this week at Poyntzpass. I also reflect on the bombs at Moira and Portadown, in my constituency, together with all the shootings and other incidents that have occurred since Christmas. We should consider the period since Christmas as of a piece. There has been a series of events aimed at destabilising the situation. I fear that that is likely to continue—indeed, it may even intensify.
It is difficult to be clear about who is responsible. There is a tendency in the media to pass off the bombings as the work of what is called the Continuity Army Council or the Continuity IRA, but I must enter a question mark on that. The Continuity Army Council has been around for a long time and has not had the manpower, the skills or the resources to mount operations such as those that we have seen in recent weeks. There is speculation about defectors from the mainstream IRA. There were some defections before Christmas, including Mr. McKevitt, the former quartermaster of the IRA who left to form a separate group. We also believe that there are people who may be called defectors who are still in place in the mainstream IRA.
The likelihood is that the recent bombs in Northern Ireland have been constructed by such people, who are still members of the mainstream IRA but who are co-operating with recent defectors—perhaps even some with a CAC background, although I am inclined to discount that. The bombs are probably constructed by the McKevitt group and sympathisers in South Armagh. There is reason to believe that the North Armagh IRA was responsible for delivering the bombs to Moira and Portadown.
Elements in the republican movement are involved in those operations. The question is whether they are doing so as part of an overall plan or independently. A recognised IRA codeword was used for the Portadown bomb and the bomb scare in Armagh the same day, but it was a couple of months out of date. I suggest that that was carefully contrived to enable some to come to the conclusion that because the codeword was out of date, those responsible must have defected from the organisation.
We do not know whether we are dealing with a real split in the republican movement or a pretend split. We must remember that we are dealing with a conspiratorial organisation. No apparent effort is being made by the leadership of that organisation to restrain its members from acting contrary to the ceasefire that is allegedly in place. It is likely that the IRA is deliberately increasing pressure through violence to take advantage of the Government's no claim, no blame approach. While pretending that a ceasefire is in place, the republican movement is going back to violence, but trying to cast the blame for it on other elements, to avoid the opprobrium that would come from the nationalist community if there was an open and avowed return to violence.
We must not underestimate the fact that there is no general support among nationalists in Northern Ireland for a return to violence. That is part of the reason for the underhand behaviour of the IRA. The IRA also wants to provoke and manipulate loyalists. It is clearly succeeding in that. There is reason to believe that the leaders of the mainstream loyalist paramilitary organisations want to maintain their ceasefire, but some groups, such as the Loyalist Volunteer Force, have broken away. There is also evidence to suggest that elements in the mainstream loyalist paramilitary organisations have returned to violence. That may have ended for a while, but there is no assurance that that suspension will continue.
The explanation for the events since Christmas is that the republican movement knows that the political process will not deliver its core objectives. In the words of a leading republican at a meeting in South Armagh a few months ago, they are going back to what they do best in the hope that that pressure will produce political movement from the Government. Over Easter and through the summer, we can expect continued violence. The medium-term objective will be preventing an agreement or wrecking any agreement that comes into operation.
Some commentators and analysts take an optimistic view of the situation, while others take the more pessimistic view that I have expressed this evening. The Government must be prepared for the worst eventualities. It would be terrible if they allowed terrorists to dictate events. Some fear that that has already been happening in recent weeks and months. I sincerely hope that the Government will prove by their actions that those fears are groundless.

Mr. Paul Stinchcombe: I shall be brief, because I have only a few points to make. A week or so ago, I spoke in the House in support of the Human Rights Bill. I bow to few in the strength of my conviction and commitment to human rights. However, none of us should forget that the greatest human right is the right to live—and not just to live, but to live in peace, free from fear, violence and intimidation.
As with all rights, that is matched by responsibilities. Perhaps the greatest responsibility is that which falls on the shoulders of the Government, to take action as necessary to protect their citizens. Therefore, as long as there is a terrorist threat to our citizens, we must take measures to ensure that we can meet it. Even if and when, as we all hope and pray, Northern Ireland finds its peaceful solution, the threat will remain by virtue of the terrorist threat from abroad.
However, because we are committed to human rights, we must tailor our measures carefully. We must meet the terrorist threat, but in ways that do not trample unnecessarily on the very human rights that we endeavour to protect. It is for that reason that I support the decision that the time for exclusion orders has gone. I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said on the issue. Exclusion orders were draconian and objectionable in principle. The powers were already in decline, and it is right that they have disappeared.
I also take the view that the case for introducing a judicial element in the process of extension of detention is compelling—as touched on by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and others in the debate. Such protection

should be built into permanent legislation, which is now due, and when passed, should be national in character, covering the entirety of the United Kingdom.
In opening this debate, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary called for a robust, clear but proportionate framework of powers across the UK, to meet the terrorist threat. That should indeed be our aim. I hope that, one day soon, it will be our achievement.

Mr. Andrew Hunter: In supporting the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) and many of the points made by the Home Secretary, I shall be selective.
The first theme to which I shall refer is the Government's plans for reforming the framework of counter-terrorism legislation, of which the prevention of terrorism Act and the continuance order are essential parts. I have no quarrel, in principle, with such a move at all. Indeed, on the contrary, I welcome it; it is overdue. The legislative framework is contained principally in two Acts. One is described as temporary, and the other as emergency—showing that its provisions were not intended to last long.
Both Acts represent the latest versions of legislation that was introduced well over 20 years ago in response to the threat of terrorism. Sadly, the intervening years have made a mockery of the hope that legislation to combat terrorism can be regarded as temporary. It is a fact of life that the threat of terrorism is here to stay, at least in foreseeable circumstances, and it is therefore right that the Government should think of creating permanent legislation.
The Home Secretary referred to his statement on 30 October, when he announced that he and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland intended to publish proposals in the form of a consultation paper early in the new year. I suppose that, as we are still in the first quarter of the year, this is still early in the year. Obviously, the subject is immensely complicated. There are conflicting issues to be taken into account and difficult balances to be achieved. All that requires careful consideration. I nevertheless hope that we shall not have to wait very much longer; we may soon become a little impatient.
Although I do not complain about the delay in the appearance of the consultation paper, I quarrel in one respect with the Government's handling of anti-terrorism legislation so far. There are strong arguments for ending internment and for allowing the power to exclude to lapse. We shall be looking for the emergence of a package of measures from the consultation process, the totality of which meets the threat of terrorism and safeguards, so far as possible, human rights and civil liberties. I genuinely believe that the Government have been mistaken to anticipate selectively what should have been considered part of a debate on a total package.
With regard to exclusion orders, I must confess that I am not yet convinced by the Home Secretary's line. I dare say that, in that respect, I am in a minority of one, but I shall nevertheless state my views on the subject. I do not share the negative view of the effectiveness of exclusion orders that many hon. Members have expressed. Exclusion orders have been effective on occasions. They can disrupt the chain of communication and command,


without which terrorist operations cannot take place. They are a weapon of pre-emptive strike; they prevent terrorism. Moreover, the use of an exclusion order marks the recipient of it and makes him virtually unusable to a terrorist organisation. In that sense, of course, arguments for exclusion orders reflect arguments in favour of internment.
The Home Secretary has not yet convinced me on another point. The fact that exclusion orders have been used with decreasing frequency in recent years is not a justification for abandoning entirely the power to use them in future. I find it impossible to say that, some time, somehow, circumstances will not arise when, in the absence of evidence to bring other charges, the use of an exclusion order might frustrate a terrorist operation and save human life.
Back on 30 October, the Home Secretary significantly based his justification for ending exclusion orders on two considerations. One was the fact that Viscount Colville, in his 1987 review of anti-terrorist legislation, had recommended it. The other was that the Home Secretary had taken into account the views of those who advise him on security matters. The annual review of the PTA is not written in stone; it does not have divine authority. However, it is worth recording and noting that Viscount Colville's successor is, effectively, one of the Home Secretary's security advisers—albeit one who operates in a narrowly defined remit—and Mr. Rowe does not agree with the Home Secretary.
We should note that, in his report, Mr. Rowe confirms the firmly held opinion of police officers
that the power is of use in combating terrorism".
In the same paragraph, he continues:
I have seen, in times past, two clear instances where an exclusion order deterred the excluded person from engaging in terrorist attacks in Britain.
As hon. Members know, he offers his personal view that the exclusion power is effective. He concludes with this sentiment, which I share:
the announcement that the power may be allowed to lapse will not deflect me from my view: the exclusion order is a useful part of the prevention of terrorism machinery".
For the time being at least, I continue to share that view.
The final theme that I wish to explore is judicial involvement in extending detention. The House will know that, two years ago, Mr. Rowe argued against that. He reasoned that it would be
unusual … a straining of the judicial function.
He argued that a judge acting in such a capacity would be acting
in name only … exercising a function which could be called judicial only because he happened to be a judge by his profession and occupation.
I noted with interest the comments of the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) on that, and I must confess that I, too, must have missed an essential point. All the debates on extending judicial involvement in which I have taken part over the years have also failed to make the distinction that he made. Nevertheless, Mr. Rowe reported last year that he had undergone something of a Damascene conversion. His view had changed, not least because judges were much more

involved in one-sided, ex parte and secret hearings in respect of applications for public interest immunity certificates.
In a debate last year, I incurred some unpopularity among my right hon. and hon. Friends by saying that I had an open mind on judicial involvement, although I was not convinced by the arguments of the Home Secretary and Mr. Rowe. My view has moved on from last year, and I now accept in principle the desirability of judicial involvement—as I understood it, before the statement of the right hon. Member for Upper Bann. It is right for the Government to consider carefully how it can be implemented.
I accept in principle the desirability of the Government's aspiration to bring about judicial involvement in extension orders, but there are accompanying dangers. The issue is not clear cut. It is imperative that judges are not regarded as an arm of the Executive. That would undermine the independence of the judiciary. The other danger is that extensions of detention are an obvious part of the process of arrest and detention, and that, arguably, is not an area in which the judiciary should become involved.
Finally, I agree with Mr. Rowe's conclusions unreservedly. There is a need for a prevention of terrorism statute and for the provisions of the PTA, and I share his opinion that each of the sections is needed for the forthcoming year. I deeply regret that, in one respect, that is not the view of the Government.

Mr. Straw: This has been an interesting debate, which has showed the widespread agreement in the House for the proposals in the order—that, with the exception of part II of the 1989 Act and one or two other more detailed points, the PTA should be renewed for the forthcoming year.
I wish to pick up a number of the points raised in the debate. Before I do so, I pay tribute to the eloquent words of the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney), who spoke movingly from his own experience about the situation in Northern Ireland. He spoke about the way in which—despite the terrorism and the efforts of the terrorists to pull the communities apart—there are thousands of people from both sides of the divide who have been determined to make unity and not division the reality in their lives. The right hon. Gentleman drew not only on his experience as someone who comes from the Province, but on eight years as an Under-Secretary and Minister of State attached to the Northern Ireland Office from 1984 to 1992.
The right hon. Members for North-West Cambridgeshire, for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) asked whether adequate steps were being taken to target effectively the finances of terrorists. The frank answer is no. I am not satisfied with the powers—but not the efforts—and the results being achieved in pursuing terrorists and other serious criminals in a way that often can hit them the most—through their bank balances, safe deposit boxes and the cash they have stashed abroad.
There are two problems. The first is the insufficiency of the existing powers; the second is the problem of following up court decisions to fruition. In terms of the non-terrorist situation, the amount we take in each year is tiny compared with the ostensible value of the orders


achieved by the courts. I am concerned about that. So far as terrorism is concerned, we are examining it closely in the context of the consultation document that we shall publish shortly. I will come to the question of when precisely, which was raised by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter).
In October, we were looking at whether we could use civil procedures to bear down on the confiscation of assets generally. Those techniques have been used successfully in the United States, Canada and—it must be said—the Republic of Ireland. We are examining their experiences because we cannot have a situation where serious criminals—terrorists or not—achieve substantial increases in their incomes and then use the protection of the law to stop us getting at their funds.
The right hon. Member for Upper Bann raised an interesting point about the terminology of the European convention on human rights. Article 5(3) of the convention states:
Everyone arrested or detained should be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power.
The right hon. Gentleman was right—it is always worth while examining the texts. We are doing so in the context of the consultation document. The obvious way of doing that is through a judge, but it must be borne in mind that there are many stipendiary magistrates, and their numbers are increasing.
I had a meeting the other day with a magistrate from a continental country—I shall not mention which one. Magistrates in that country are judicial officers, but some of their functions are a combination of the functions exercised by the police and Home Office officials in this country. We must recognise that it is against that background that the European Court of Human Rights has come to its decisions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) apologises through me to the House for the fact that he has had to leave before the end of the debate. He asked whether we should have included within the Human Rights Bill a derogation relating to the PTA. We regret the need to start the Bill's life with the derogation, but it is unavoidable if we are to preserve the existing power to extend detention. Only fresh primary legislation to introduce a judicial element will get over the need to continue the derogation. Under the Human Rights Bill, the derogation will itself lapse after five years, unless it is specifically renewed.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke referred to the exclusion powers, and I understand his point. He quoted Mr. Rowe, and accepted that, in other respects, Mr. Rowe's views—and his own—had changed. I am grateful to Mr. Rowe who has, as usual, done a thorough job. It is a fact that on some issues we are bound to take different points of view. It is worth drawing it to the attention of the House that, although he has reported from time to time the view of the police and the security forces in favour of exclusion orders, he has also reported that this is not a unanimous view. I draw to the attention of the House paragraph 29 of his 1995 report, in which he said:

The overwhelming majority of port officers gave me the answer that the orders are useful and should be retained. But there was a fair number of officers, of all ranks, who held the opposite view.
That is a fact and, in reciting the opposite view, he said:
On the other hand, the argument is that in the absence of exclusion, a known and experienced member of an organisation can be noticed at the port, and followed thereafter, and kept under surveillance.

Sir Brian Mawhinney: I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for missing the first few minutes of his reply. Having been in the Chamber since 4 pm, I had gone to get something to eat, so I apologise for missing those first few minutes. He has been talking about detention and the derogation. Can he remind the House how long that derogation still has to run? I am trying to tempt him into speculating whether his legislation will be before the House before that derogation is up, or whether he contemplates having to renew it.

Mr. Straw: I was not talking about the derogation that has been entered on the record before the Council of Europe, derogating from the European convention. I was talking about the fact that we have had to repeat that derogation within the body of the Human Rights Bill. It is within that that the derogation will lapse within five years, unless it is renewed under powers given in the Bill. I anticipate that we shall sort this problem out well within the five-year period, including making provisions within article 5(3) for a judicial element in extensions of detention. The right hon. Gentleman was in government for much longer than I have been so far and will be aware of the pressure on parliamentary time. However, it is no great secret that I hope and believe that we should legislate permanently in that field in the next two or three years.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke gently tweaked me for the fact that, in my statement on 30 October, I said that I hoped to publish the consultation document early in the new year. That was being over-optimistic. It is now early in the new year, but I am anxious to publish it in the next two or three months. It is a complicated, but also an important, matter.
I think that I have answered the main specific points that right hon. and hon. Members have raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe), in a short but eloquent speech, said that we needed to remember that the greatest fundamental human right was the right to live, free from fear, intimidation and terror. It is the duty of the Government and of the House to secure that fundamental right above all. Without it, no other rights or freedoms can be enjoyed. Against that background, and with that fundamental right in mind, I commend the order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the draft Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 (Partial Continuance) Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 24th February, be approved.

Owen Oyston

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Jane Kennedy.]

Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours: You will know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this a particularly difficult issue to raise. Members of Parliament do not usually stand up in the Chamber and allow themselves to be identified with those who would seek to defend a man successfully prosecuted for the offence of rape. What I say here this evening could easily be misrepresented.
I take that risk because I believe that someone must speak up on this case. Arising out of the Oyston trial, I see the danger of future miscarriages of justice, where cases are badly investigated, men are charged with rape and juries convict on the basis of uncorroborated evidence in closely contested cases. I am talking about convictions in the complete absence of medical or scientific support.
This debate is about the case of the rape of a 16-year old girl by a 57-year-old man. I am arguing that the case raises issues of public policy and natural justice. I want it to be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
This was one of a series of six such allegations made against this man. A magistrate found no case to answer in three of the cases. A Crown court acquitted him in two. The allegations, which a jury upheld, were that the man indecently assaulted a young woman, whom I will call J, in the back of a car in the presence of two other passengers, one of whom was her friend. Twenty minutes later, J alleged, he raped her in his own bed in his own home. Both allegations were challenged by J's friend Lysa Rubotham, who was in the car and in the bedroom.
I have met Mr. Oyston on two occasions. The first time was in 1988 when, following allegations by a Conservative Member of Parliament about his activities in Derbyshire, I met him in a hotel in my constituency to confront him with the allegations. I conducted my own inquiries, which included interviewing people in Derbyshire. The allegations proved unfounded.
I then presented Mr. Peter Carter-Ruck with a file of papers that had come my way from a number of sources. Those papers were, I believe, used in a successful libel case. My activities included tabling an early-day motion, which proved a considerable embarrassment to Mr. Oyston. I did so in the belief that I was acting in the public interest. Allegations had been made that were damaging to the Labour party and, as far as I was concerned, someone had to investigate.
On the second occasion in 1995, Mr. Oyston asked to meet me in the House of Commons and told me that he was the subject of a conspiracy—his words. He was being prosecuted for rape. I could not comment on the issue of conspiracy—I have no knowledge of those matters. He told me that he had been very stupid, an admission he was subsequently to make in the course of his trial. He also told me that he had been having sexual relationships with young women. He seemed to me to be admitting that he had taken advantage of his position as a media tycoon. During the meeting, I spoke to his lawyer on the phone and told him that I was not prepared to take any action, because I believed that the matter was sub judice. However, I did state that I would like to be kept informed of developments because of my previous inquiries in the

late 1980s. I have now read much of the evidence in this case, including sworn statements to the police and affidavits in relation to the new evidence. I have also read the available transcripts of both trial and appeal.
The question is whether a charge of rape should have been brought against Owen Oyston. Oyston admits that he took advantage of young women. The House will deplore such conduct, and I find it unspeakable—but such is life. We have never legislated to make such relationships illegal, although some hon. Members may want to. However much we might condemn such behaviour, it is not a criminal offence, whereas rape is a particularly serious and nasty offence.
Did a change in the law on rape, five days before Oyston was charged, prejudice his trial? I have often asked why that change was introduced only five days before he was charged and whether there was a connection. A rule that had obliged judges to warn juries about the dangers of convicting on the uncorroborated word of one complainant in a rape case had been abolished. In 1993, the then Home Secretary said that it had to go. He said that it was outdated and demeaning to women, particularly in rape cases. I believe that that rule change was critical to the Oyston trial.
The danger of the change was outlined by Baroness Mallalieu in some detail, on Second Reading of the Criminal Appeal Bill 1995 in the House of Lords. Indeed, I am informed that, in north-west England, at least six other rape cases since 1995 have resulted in what has been described as grotesque and disastrous injustice, involving the suicide of innocent people and the gaoling of others who have made false allegations. Because of shortage of time, I have been unable to examine the detail of each of these cases.
In the case against Oyston, the prosecution brought an uncorroborated allegation of rape. However, the defence produced an eyewitness, Lysa Rubotham, J's friend—the other woman in the car whom the Crown acknowledged to have been present. I have interviewed this woman. During an interview at my home four weeks ago, she told me that she believed that an injustice has been done. She insisted that no assault had taken place in the car in which she was travelling, and that no rape had taken place in the house that the two girls had visited.
The case hinged entirely on the credibility of the two women witnesses. Both the Crown and the defence agreed that the two women had been present in the defendant's home on the only occasion when an offence could have been committed. Lysa Rubotham believes that J lied to the court. She told me that she would believe for the rest of her life that an injustice has been done. In my home, she openly wept over her failure to be believed in the court.
No other material evidence was available to the defence or the jury, as J could not say in what precise part of any year, season or month any offence had been committed. Most remarkably, she allowed two whole years to pass before she revealed to anyone that the rape had taken place.
Did the police, in the gathering of evidence, act as even-handed investigators? The first police interview notes in the case are now missing. Summing up for the defence in the Oyston trial, Mr. Anthony Scrivener said that Lysa Rubotham, who was questioned on 24 occasions, was asked only once—informally and on the telephone—about J's allegation. Scrivener said:


It does not require a great brain to realize in the circumstances that Lysa Rubotham must be an important potential witness.
She was never asked to make a statement about it. Obviously a material witness—and when she was asked she indicated to the police that she would not be corroborating the police's version of it and so
the police felt that
it was not necessary to make a statement.
Another important question is whether the witnesses were treated equally. Why was J given anonymity, whereas the character of the only other eye-witness, Lysa Rubotham, was torn to shreds before the jury? Was article 6(3)(d) of the European convention on human rights breached? Under that article, everyone charged with a criminal offence has a right to
examine or have examined witnesses against him and obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him.
As the complainant in a rape case, J was granted anonymity and protected from certain lines of cross-examination under section 2 of the Sexual Offence Act 1976. She could not be asked about her sexual and personal life. No such protection was afforded to Lysa Rubotham, whose evidence directly contradicted the evidence of J. Miss Rubotham was cross-examined in the way that rape complainants used to suffer in the days before the 1976 Act. That could hardly be described as examination "under the same conditions" as described under article 6.
Lysa Rubotham was named. Her home address and carefully selected photographs were published in many newspapers. As she feared, she was forced by the Crown to reveal details of her youthful promiscuity. She was portrayed in newspapers after the trial as a liar and a loose woman. After she had admitted having a sexual relationship with the defendant, she was asked by Mrs. Helen Grindrod, for the Crown, to say whether she had had promiscuous sexual encounters, at the age of 17, with four business men, who were all named in open court.
The questioning was designed to demonstrate that, although Lysa Rubotham was a friend and colleague of the complainant, she was promiscuous and might have a stronger loyalty to the defendant and be prepared to lie on oath for him.
The trial judge told the jury that one of the two witnesses must have lied to them. He also told them that their resolution of the conflict of evidence was central to the question of guilt. Since the two contradictory witnesses were not examined "under the same conditions", as required by the European convention, the jury could not weigh accurately the evidence of one young woman against the evidence of the other young woman.
Many people in Lancashire believe that the defendant was denied a fair trial. My view is that, if each of the witnesses had been treated in the same way, the jury might well have come to a different verdict.
I received a letter from a woman in Silverdale in Lancashire. It says:
Re: Owen Oyston.
Dear Sir,
I have been interested to read that you, as I am myself, are greatly concerned at the misjudgment used in the above case and are willing to help to right an obvious breach of what is fair in:
The way the case was conducted.
The biased questioning of participants.
The length of the sentence handed out.
The obvious bias of the policeman involved, whose comments were totally unacceptable on television.
I confess that I was unaware of those matters.
The sending to Garth prison of a man who has never been involved in violence. One of the prisons used for the worst type of offender.
This man, whom I have never met, has obviously upset people in high places. I can only conclude that what has happened to him is as the result of a deliberate conspiracy.
Please join with me in righting this wrong and bring it to the notice of Parliament.
The letter was signed.
I do not want to comment on any conspiracy theories, but I thought that that letter was an indicator of the opinion of many people in Lancashire who have been following the case, and I thought it appropriate to read it to the House.
There is one aspect of the preparation of the case against Owen Oyston that I find particularly disturbing. Why was the evidence of the appalling and chronic abuse of drugs not adequately researched or considered by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Crown court, or even the Court of Appeal? At one trial, J was formally given immunity from prosecution for past drug abuse. However, the police did not carry out a full inquiry into her heavy use of amphetamines, Ecstasy and cannabis. This was a woman whose memory of events, late one night four years earlier, would be so vital to the jury at the trial of Owen Oyston.
The question is whether courts should be allowed to rely in rape trials wholly on the evidence of those who have repeatedly used drugs. I note that, once again in our legal system, three Court of Appeal judges have been able to reject a mass of new evidence—some of which has recently been drawn to my attention—gathered in a man's defence after his conviction, but unavailable to his lawyers or to the jury in his trial.
As I have said, raising a case of this nature is very difficult for a Member of Parliament, but I feel very, very strongly that something is wrong, and that the truth has got to come out. A barrister recently said to me that the Oyston trial had implications for the whole of the law on rape. Something, somewhere, is wrong. The law is being brought into disrepute. I can only foresee great injustice being done in the future, unless we again review the law.
Before his trial, Owen Oyston was told by lawyers that, if he was prepared to say that he had consensual sex with J, a conviction for rape would be very unlikely, because of the operation of the law on consent. However, Oyston refused to adopt what he claimed was a dishonest defence. Both Oyston and Lysa Rubotham were adamant that no sex, consensual or otherwise, had ever taken place between Oyston and J.
Although I have not met Oyston for three years and have not been able to discuss the case with him, he has let it be known from prison that he will not admit his guilt, even to placate the parole board. His message from prison, to the girl who gave evidence for him, was:
You told the truth. I will not make a liar of you by admitting a crime I did not do. I would stay in jail for ten years if it was needed to prove my innocence and your honesty".
As we adopt the European convention on human rights, do we not have an obligation to show that our own house is order in that difficult area of the law? It is with that in mind that an application will be made to the Criminal Cases Review Commission for a review of the Oyston case. The commission has two criteria—exceptional circumstances and new evidence. The application can meet both criteria. I earnestly hope that the commission, when it receives the application, will refer the matter back to the Court of Appeal. There is sufficient new evidence available to warrant its intervention.
Finally, I should like to make it absolutely clear that neither Mr. Oyston nor any member of his family has asked me to raise this case in the House. I have done so of my own volition. I believe that something is not right.
I wish to leave the House with some very simple facts to consider. First, Oyston admits that he had sexual relations with young women. Secondly, he has consistently denied rape, even though that may have adverse implications for parole. Thirdly, no scientific evidence for rape exists. Fourthly, no medical evidence exists. Fifthly, there is no firm date for the offence. Sixthly, the police lost the original interview notes. Seventhly, the incident was not reported until two years after it took place.
Eighthly, the accused refused to admit to any sexual activity even though that could have enhanced his prospects of acquittal or brought a lighter sentence. Ninthly, the friend of the victim, Lysa Rubotham, who was present throughout, insists that no rape took place. Tenthly, the victim admitted to being a regular user of hallucinatory drugs. Something is wrong, and I want something done about it.

The Attorney-General (Mr. John Morris): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) on his good fortune in securing this debate, and thank him for his courtesy in providing advance warning of the points that he intended to raise. It must be the best part of 30 years since I replied to an Adjournment debate.
Although I cannot endorse my hon. Friend's portrayal of Mr. Oyston's conviction as a miscarriage of justice, I acknowledge his courage and sincerity in bringing the matter before the House. The House has no more sympathy for properly convicted rapists than do the people we represent. He acts, however, in the best parliamentary traditions by putting forward with his customary vigour the case of an individual whom he believes to have a legitimate grievance, notwithstanding that his cause may be unpopular and that he has criticised that individual in the past.
My hon. Friend's difficulties go deeper, because I know he recognises that questions of guilt or innocence in individual cases are a matter to be determined through

judicial processes rather than in a political forum. Similar constraints attach to my role, as I would not expect to answer to the House for the nitty-gritty of each and every one of the 1.3 million cases conducted annually by the prosecuting authorities that I superintend. He largely recognised these limited roles by stating at the outset that he seeks consideration of the case by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Mr. Oyston had his appeal to the Court of Appeal dismissed. He does not require my leave or that of a court to apply to the CCRC. He is entitled to do that as of right. The commission has no power itself to change the decision of a court. Its task is to consider whether there is some merit in an applicant's case, and, if so, to examine it to decide whether it would have a real possibility of succeeding if it were given a further hearing in an appeal court. The commission reaches its decisions impartially.
I want to elaborate slightly on what I have already said, but there is not the time tonight to go into my role and duty of superintendence of the Crown Prosecution Service. On 19 December 1979, Lord Havers gave a written answer to the House on that matter. Had there been time—I have only eight minutes—I could have set that out.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Cannot my right hon. and learned Friend speak until 10.30 pm?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): The hon. Gentleman is correct: there is no shortage of time.

The Attorney-General: I am obliged. I can deal with the matter in extenso. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for putting me right, not for the first time.
I have a statutory duty to superintend both the Crown Prosecution Service, which was responsible for the prosecution of Mr. Oyston, and the Serious Fraud Office. The term "superintendence" has been in use for more than 100 years. To my mind, it strikes a proper balance in our democratic society between the need to ensure proper accountability to Parliament while guarding against improper Executive or political influence over the prosecution.
In a speech outside Parliament in 1979, Lord Havers explained his views of "general superintendence" over the Director of Public Prosecutions' activities and the extent to which he was responsible to Parliament for them. He added:
but I am not responsible for the individual decisions of the DPP or his officers. The DPP, although being an officer under the Crown, is thus completely independent and non-political. He"—
she at present—
acts for the public, in the public interest, and for no one else. He will of course discuss particular cases with me and consult me generally; but the decisions taken in the field where he is vested with the discretion to prosecute will be his decision.
I referred earlier, when I wrongly thought that I did not have the time to give the quotation, to Lord Havers' written answer. He said:
My responsibility for superintendence of the duties of the director does not require me to exercise a day-to-day control and to give specific approval of every decision he takes. The director makes many decisions in the course of his duties which he does not refer to me, but nevertheless I am still responsible for his actions


in the sense that I am answerable in the House for what he does. Superintendence means that I must have regard to the overall prosecution policy which he pursues. My relationship with him is such that I require to be told in advance of the major, difficult, and, from the public interest point of view, the more important matters so that, should the need arise, I am in the position to exercise my power of direction."—[Official Report, 19 December 1979; Vol. 976, c. 187.]
My primary responsibility, therefore, is to oversee the effective and efficient administration of the prosecuting authorities that I superintend. Hence my establishment of the Glidewell review. I cannot and do not hold myself out as responsible for the day-to-day conduct of each and every prosecution, although these constitutional niceties explain to the House how I approach my responsibilities.
The comments by my hon. Friend raise three key questions. The first is whether Mr. Oyston should have been prosecuted. The evidential test is that there must be sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. Given the verdicts of the jury convicting Mr. Oyston of rape and indecent assault of this girl, which were upheld by the Court of Appeal, I do not think that I need say more about that first test.
The second test is that the prosecution of the case must be in the public interest. There can be few, if any, circumstances in which, if the evidence were sufficient, the public interest would not require prosecutions in relation to rape and indecent assault such as were alleged against Mr. Oyston.
The second question raised by my hon. Friend concerns the law on corroboration. He is right to say that, before 3 February 1995, the law required trial judges in cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct to give a warning to the jury to the effect that it would be dangerous to convict the defendant on the uncorroborated evidence of the complainant.
The warning proved a fruitful source of appeal by those convicted, and was often seen as casting an unwarranted slur on female complainants. In 1991, the Law Commission recommended the abolition of the relevant law. After full debate here in Parliament, that recommendation was implemented by sections 32 and 33 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
Those provisions do not mean that a warning is never given. Trial judges still have a discretion to give the warning, but there has to be an evidential basis to justify the warning. It is not to be given merely because the female makes an allegation of sexual misconduct. I should be surprised indeed if this House voted for a reversal of that position. To meet the question asked by my hon. Friend, as a matter of fact, the trial judge exercised his discretion in Mr. Oyston's favour, and did give such a warning to the jury.
Before I move to the next of my hon. Friend's points, I digress to note that the two criticisms are markedly at odds with the criticisms generally levelled at the Crown Prosecution Service for being reluctant to prosecute, and the criminal justice system for making it too difficult to bring rapists to justice, in particular through inadequate protection of the complainant. Prosecutors might perhaps be forgiven for thinking at times that "damned if you do, damned if you don't", is their eternal lot.
That brings me to my third issue. My hon. Friend refers to the evidence of Lysa Rubotham, and the point he makes excellently demonstrates the limitations on the House and

on myself. My hon. Friend saw her, and clearly formed a favourable impression. The jury also saw her—and, for that matter, saw the complainant as well. They heard Lysa Rubotham give evidence, and the cross-examination which followed. They clearly did not believe her. I have no means of reconciling those views, and nor does the House.
The issue as to the cross-examination of J, as referred to by my hon. Friend—Miss C, as she is referred to in the law reports—about her previous sexual experience is one which Mr. Oyston's learned and very experienced counsel was more than able to deal with at trial and at the Court of Appeal. The trial judge was in the best position to decide what questioning would be allowed.
The nature of the defence was that the events had not taken place at all, and not that she had consented, which is a frequent defence in such cases. I repeat, the defence was that the events had not taken place at all, and not that she had consented. None the less, there was in fact limited cross-examination about the previous sexual conduct of the complainant directed specifically to the issue which was said to be the defence.
My hon. Friend has also raised the manner in which this witness was cross-examined about her sexual history. He has referred to article 6 of the European convention on human rights. It is true to say that section 2 of the 1994 Act limits the manner in which a complainant in a case such as this can be questioned, but only if such questioning cannot be justified in the context of the case.
Further, the trial judge is under a duty imposed by the common law to do his utmost to restrain unnecessary cross-examination of any witnesses. Additionally, the Bar Council code of conduct requires counsel to limit cross-examination of witnesses to matters which are not merely scandalous or intended to vilify, insult or annoy the witness. Such protection is afforded to both complainants and other witnesses.
In any event, the article 6 point was not and could not then be pursued by defence counsel at either the trial or before the Court of Appeal. I contrast that with the situation that we hope will prevail when the Human Rights Bill has been passed by both Houses and the European convention has been incorporated into United Kingdom law. If Mr. Oyston's advisers now feel that there is merit in that point, it is a matter for them how to pursue it.
My hon. Friend spoke of fresh evidence. The Court of Appeal considered the fresh evidence. There were doubts about the weight that could be attached to some of it, and, in any event, the court declined to accept that it could have an impact on the safety of the verdicts. I should say, for the sake of completeness and with all due respect to my hon. Friend, that what he says about the complainant's involvement with drugs seems to exceed what was said by Mr. Oyston's counsel at the trial, who at one stage in cross-examination put it no higher than "dabbling".

Mr. Campbell-Savours: The reason why there is more information about that aspect of the trial is that, in a subsequent trial, in which a Mr. Peter Martin was prosecuted, the banisters were able to extract far more information from J on that matter. In my view, that information would have been relevant in the previous trial, if it had surfaced at that stage.

The Attorney-General: I do not have with me the dates of that trial, which, as my hon. Friend said,


was subsequent, in order to compare them with the date of the appeal in the Court of Appeal. If there had been a change of position by defence counsel, one might have been right to anticipate that that point would have been explored in that court, so my hon. Friend's point lacks the force that it might otherwise have had.
I stress, because it is important for future debates of this kind, that the House is not in a position to review the guilt or innocence of those tried in our courts on allegations of criminal misconduct. There is an established appeal procedure, and, if and when that is exhausted, convicted persons can apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Previously, Mr. Oyston would have had to petition the Home Secretary; that is no longer the case. Since 31 March 1997, the Criminal Cases Review Commission has been up and running.
In Mr. Oyston's case, the Court of Appeal has recently given its view that the convictions were safe. Mr. Oyston now has the right to apply to the commission if he so wishes. He does not need the leave of the courts, the Home Secretary or myself. It will be for the commission to assess the merits of his application, and, if so invited, it may take account of, and give full weight to, matters to which my hon. Friend alluded.
I cannot say more. Parliament has set up the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and, if Mr. Oyston so wishes, he may avail himself of its procedures.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Ten o'clock.